


Jetsam

by jplus



Series: The Edge [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Aliens because ......Star Wars, Angst, Canonical becoming one with the Force, Consensual Sex, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, References to Torture, swearing because soldiers swear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2018-12-31 18:35:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 52
Words: 170,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12138606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jplus/pseuds/jplus
Summary: "A patchwork junker of a ship appears on the Resistance base on Yavin, with a forceful young woman aboard who refuses to speak to anyone but some of the veterans of an older war."A story in which characters from Rogue One survive to influence characters and events on the edges of The Force Awakens and the far side of The Last Jedi. Some set post-Endor and the Battle of Jakku others post-Crait.





	1. Jetsam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A patchwork junker of a ship appears on the Resistance base on Yavin, with a forceful young woman aboard who refuses to speak to anyone but some of the veterans of an older war.
> 
> Poe Dameron learns he may know a little less about the history of the Rebellion than he thought.

"Give us the controls. NOW,” he said ,"We will take you down. We can still do this the easy way.”

_Assuming this trap lasts that long._

No reply. _Damn it!_

BB8 was able to fix an ear on the hull.  
He could make out a voice now..

………………

_presumably whichever maniac was passing as a pilot, the dark haired figure he’d glimpsed through the cockpit window_

  
[...can’t do it … we have to….either New Republic or Resistance..]

…………………………………..

_a second voice_

[…no…please…..what if they're First Order?]

[ _unintelligible_ ]

_first voice_

[…..were First Order we'd be fucking dead by fucking now….doing it…brace..]

………………

 

BB8 and the Nav gave him the green light.

  
The “pilot” had unlocked the controls about one second before the little ship dropped too low to save.

He wrestled the broken thing down onto the farthest end of the farthest secured landing field. Then he landed the X-wing 50 meters in from it.

  
As he cracked his own cockpit and climbed out, he could see the speeders coming in, with the security teams. He left BB to roll himself out and ran across the strip toward the patched together little shuttle.

  
Ground security was already in place when the rickety hatch opened. Guns were trained, and Security was barking out orders for those inside to get out with hands empty and in sight.

Three people came out the back hatch with their arms over their heads. Two were humans: One, dark-haired, female, maybe….Another looked like an adolescent….maybe 14, with tangles of long black braids, tanned with green tattooing on their arms. The third was a non-human, small with light brown fur.

Sargent Tellon was ordering them all to kneel, as Dameron reached them.

“Check the ship!” he shouted to the pilot.

Poe got into the back hatch. The thing had no cabin….it was basically just a small box with a back hatch and a couple of fold-down “misery” seats and straps. He climbed up the one step into what passed for a cockpit. No droid for integration. The nav computer wasn’t even inside a console, just welded to the floor.

 

There wasn’t even a co-pilot seat, just torn bolts on the floor where one used to be. He had a weird feeling that all the safety straps were duct tape and gravitational controls were three big box magnets and a lawnmower engine.

He lifted the windscreen hatch and peered out.

The three “crew” from the shuttle were on their knees now but still holding hands

Tellon’s team still had weapons up, and were ringing them, shouting again for them to let go and lay their hands flat on the tarmac.

_They looked like kids.That explained the demented flying._

"It's alright," the dark haired girl was saying, not to the Resistance soldiers surrounding her. She seemed to be trying to comfort her two companions, who looked flatly, terrified. The smaller one was in tears.

"It's alright,” the girl repeated, “They won’t hurt us. Do what they say."

Dan Tellon’s people still had the guns on them. It seemed like overkill, but after the suicide infiltration on Yazin, and with the General on base…paranoia was ratcheted high.

The girl looked straight up at Dannie, who had moved in close, blaster in hand, and was fairly snarling “Stop! You’re frightening them. They think you’re going to hurt them.”

She muttered, as if to herself, “Quién diablos te crees que eres?”

Dameron thought, _as Papa used to say, Que demonios?_

  
B.B. had rolled into the back of the shuttle and was cheerfully naming off all the types and models the various parts came from.

"Dannie," the pilot called down through the windscreen and over his comm, "I don't think they came in hot because they meant to."

"I'm Sergeant Dan Tellon of the Resistance. Who are you?"

The girl-who-was-clearly-in-charge reached over and squeezed the hand of the tattooed teen-ager, who was trembling.

"Keep your hands in sight," Tellon barked.

 

"We'll do what you ask. Just stop yelling. We came to you, if you’re the Resistance. Stop being assholes and let us talk to somebody!”

  
Poe came out through the back hatch, tapping BB as he passed him. “Come on.”

*this is interesting!*

“Too interesting,” Dameron said.

*it should have exploded. why didn’t it?*

 _The Force,_ the pilot thought.

The three misfits were on their feet now, and Dannie had lowered his blaster, although the rest of his squad was still on alert. He was slipping zip-tie restraints on them all….not as tightly as regulation would have demanded.

“Identify yourselves now,” he was saying,” and tell me how you found this base.”

The other two were flat-out looking at the dark-haired girl…neither of them would speak before she did.

She shook her head.

“I can’t,” she said, “It’s not my risk to take,” she was looking straight up at Dannie, “other peoples lives depend on me. There are four people I can report to..take me to one of them.”

 

_________________________

 

  
Dameron was brought in an hour later to report to her directly.

General Organa was looking at a data pad. She passed it to Dameron, and leaned back a little further than seemed quite safe in her chair.

“Do you consider yourself a student of history, Commander?”

Coming from the General, he was pretty sure this was a trick question.

  
“These are the only four people your young wild woman insists she will talk to. What do these names have In common?”

Names hovered above the screen:

Stordan Tonc  
Davits Draven  
Bodhi Rook  
Mon Mothma

  
_Mon Mothma, he knew well, of course, heroine and leader in the Civil War, first Chancellor of the New Republic._

_Bodhi Rook….if this was the same Commander Rook he knew, was a trainer on Base Nine. Terrific guy, could fix anything, fly almost anything._

_The other two he had never heard of….although the name Tonc was strangely familiar, now that he thought about it._

  
_Ma’am,_ the pilot thought _, is this another one of your “teachable moments?”_

When he didn’t answer quickly enough, the General shook her head.

  
“Mon's health is very fragile, it’s possible she has already passed,” Leia Organa sat up straight, seemed to sigh then quickly went on, ”even, if she has not, there could be no question of bringing her here. Lt. Stordan Tonc was reported killed at Jakku. General Davits Draven may still be alive, somewhere in Republic territory…we are trying to find out. I’ve ordered Commander Rook brought up here as quickly as possible."

Leia Organa turned off the pad, and slid it aside, then stood stiffly, stretching her arms.

“You are a fine young man, Dameron,” she said, “One of the finest pilots I’ve ever known, and an intelligent, honorable and dedicated soldier, but sometimes you bring me to tears. I’ll ask you another question..... knowing full well what you are going to say. Have you ever heard of Jyn Erso?”

Dameron admitted that he had not.

 _If she slapped him, it would hardly be the first time_.

She didn’t, but she was clearly thinking about it.

“Please accompany me to Detention, Commander Dameron.”

 

______________

  
None of them had spoken. Once they were scanned, the General had ordered them un-restrained, and allowed to stay together. They all seemed shell shocked, although the Leader, as Dameron thought of the dark-haired girl,….. _he could not make himself call her the Pilot, because that was the most shit-awful flying he had ever seen that did not actually result in a crash with fatalities_ …..seemed the most hyper-vigilant and suspicious.

Tellon and Commander Jerra were absolutely against allowing the General to talk to them unaccompanied.

“Bullshit,” Organa said, “I’ve got Dameron and….” she looked down at BB8, “What’s your name again. sweetheart?”

“BB8,” Poe said.

*bb8* BB8 said *poe fights well and i will defend the general lady with my life and i have a flame thrower*

  
Through the glass, they could see there was a cot against the back wall and all three of the …. _for lack of a better word, detainees_ …sat on it. The young one with the green tattoos was lying with their head on the furred person’s lap and they in turn were leaning against the dark-haired girl.

The General entered and sat at the small table. “Do you know who I am?” she asked.

The girl spoke, “You are Leia Organa.”

Organa nodded, “But you won’t tell us who you are, what you want or how you found us here?”

The girl whispered, “Take care of him” to the furred person and got off the cot, crossing to sit in the chair across from the General. Poe stood. BB rolled over to the cot and rolled his head inquiringly.

The furred person actually reached out a small dark hand, skimmed it over BB8 and seemed to smile through great nervousness.

“Did you make it?” they asked Poe, whispering in accented Basic.

*no* BB said.

“Sort of, a little,” Poe said.

*no* BB repeated.

“I’m sorry,” the girl said, “I mean no insult ma’am….but I can’t….. I can’t break command protocol. I can’t take that chance.”

Leia nodded, wearily,

There were voices behind and Jerra appeared with Commander Rook.

“Bodhi,” Leia said turning with a smile…the smile Dameron remembered from history vids, “I’ve wanted to come see you so many times

The Jedhan was still wearing grease stained cover-alls, they must have pulled him right off of the repair bays on 9 and speeded him straight up here. He smiled at the General.

“Princess…” he said, bowing slightly, in an old-fashioned way.

Then he seemed to catch full sight of the girl. Dameron had the feeling that, as he did so, he truly forgot all the rest of them were even in the room.

“This young person flew a damaged ship directly onto our base today….evading all shields and warning scanners…she says she will only speak to you.” Organa was saying as she stood, holding out the chair so Rook could take her place.

The older man’s eyes were wide, but the girl’s face was a revelation. All suspicion and self-discipline vanished. She looked a young 19 at best and as if she were about to cry.

“Sir,” she said, “….Bodhi Rook.”

“Hello.” the Commander said, gently, sitting in the chair, across from her, and reaching out to cover her hands with his scraped and oil-stained ones, “Please dear, can you tell me your name?”

“My name is Kaylyra Andor,” the girl said, “My father is Cassian Andor.” She reached into a pocket in the seam of her shirt….

_Jerra made a reflective motion but Organa lifted a hand to wave her off._

….and laid two small green-silver circles, attached to a scrap of brown cloth, on the table.

Poe recognized what they were. Rank pips from an old Alliance uniform jacket, Captain...Intelligence, not regular Service red. The starbird patch would have been sewn above.

  
“My mother…,” the girl was saying.

“I know, dear," Rook said, “Your mother is Jyn Erso.”

The girl lowered her head into her hands then as if finally unnerved with relief and began to cry.

Rook crossed to the other side of the table and put his arms around her.

“I am so glad to meet you Kaylyra.” he said.

 


	2. The Interview

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia Organa listens as the young woman who has just come barreling into the Resistance Base at Yavin gives a statement. Answering some questions, but not others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hopefully not too mysterious....just mysterious enough

  
** INITIATE/Interview/desg. non-hostile/intake/Command Auth./#115-WL/Organa/Army of the Resistance/General  **  
** Droid rec/R4-195 31.02.30by9.00.06 **

**_Obsv. Gen.Organa, Leia, AR; Flt. Comdr. Dameron, Poe , AR; Comdr. Rook, Bodhi; AR; Let. Connix, Kaydel Ko, AR_ **

 

[ My name is Kaylyra Andor. My father is retired Capt…Major Cassian Andor of the Army of the Alliance to Restore the Republic. My mother is Jyn Erso, Sergeant, retired of that same service.] **voice ID/Subject/01/pending id**

_“is”….she believes her parents to still be alive….a little too much force in the pronunciation….she is afraid she might be mistaken in her belief._

 

[I was born on a planet called Ea, outside the Modell Sector.]

  
_“outside the Modell Sector?” seriously, child…that could be anywhere from Jedha to Endor or halfway across the Unknown Regions._

 

[My parents monitored a covert Intelligence surveillance station until the end of the War. They reported directly to Alliance Intelligence Special Services and Generals Davits Draven and Aerin Cracken.]

  
_Cracken had died three years ago. a tiny scrap of shrapnel from the bombing of the Command Field Station at the Battle of Jakku had been at left in place as too dangerous to remove. a fall in his home on Naboo had knocked it loose. the official cause of death on his record was listed as “combat Injuries sustained at the Battle of Jakku 5ABY” ….“Jakku’s Final Casualty”, one of the obituaries read._

  
[After the war they were….retired….but maintained the station, pending possible reactivation.]

_the military language…ahh…that would be Andor. oh heavens. what kind of bedtime stories did he tell his little girl? Cassian Andor, last loyal soldier of the Alliance…well, perhaps not, perhaps that’s me……still, Draven would be so proud._

  
[Ea is....difficult to reach...for many reasons....and light speed navigation is almost impossible in our system.]

_Dameron shifted, "Especially if you don't know what you're doing." he muttered under his breath....poor piloting seemed to cause him actual physical discomfort._

  
[About seven years ago we began to see increased traffic and activity in the….nearby sectors.]

_she seemed to pause for breath there.... was it because she was afraid of speaking too quickly, or just afraid? ...why the fuck was Rook smiling?_

 

[We encountered….personnel…that seemed to be part of a neo-Imperial force.]

_“we…?” i swear Andor, if you were here right now i’d slap you...please tell me you have not taught children to talk like this out there._

 

[I mean, I mean by that…]

_she seemed to realize what she sounded like,…or maybe she had just caught Rook’s eye through the glass…_

 

[Stormtroopers. At least, that’s what they identified themselves as, and...]

_fuck...seven years ago, you say?_

 

[….actually said they were the Empire. We....my father thought it odd that they didn't even use the term “First Order”. The first group we saw had been trying to travel between two of their own bases.... in what's called the Unknown Regions.....in a transport shuttle, but they lost their navigation and came in....under our scanning. My....our people... killed them before they were able to get a signal out. We...my parents... relayed this information and tried to expand our...surveillance of those sectors. They sent reports and information to the New Republic.]

_fucking hell! to who?_

 

o **n comm:** Did they receive any reply to, or orders from the New Rebublic after this report?/ **voice ID #115-WL/Organa/Army of the Resistance/General**

_the girl hesitated...._

 

[I don't know. Some kind of reply came, about that time, but my father said something about "invalid authority" and my mother…]

_Rook looked down quickly as if hiding a smile again...._

 

[…she said that she was "a fucking Sargent in the fucking Alliance and she might THINK about working for the New Republic after they sent her a handbook and a copy of the pension plan.”]

_oh force.....i wish i'd met this woman....._

 

[We set up our own planetary defenses after that, but I know that my parents continued to send messages about what....we...could see in the sector.]

_the mysterious files that Draven had sent her? the maps…you old fox…did you hide this from the Senate when they refused to act on the first reports? was it because we found out Sindian was a mole and you thought the whole NRI might be compromised? or were you just trying to protect them…..your last field agents?_

  
[We have small ships we’ve put together…. mostly for on-planet and in-system use. We don’t have the ability to evacuate the planet and, even if we did, we couldn’t.]

_“we” again. but this time she didn’t seem to mean just her parents and herself…..the other two who had come with her…it was clear that neither of them had ever been off-planet before, perhaps never even imagined it….that kind of shock was unmistakable._

“ _we” means her planet, her people..…the world she calls home…_

 

[We have….alliances on Ea and we’ve worked to keep ourselves safe and prepare….in the hope that the New Republic would act to counter the First Order’s expansion. We learned about the Resistance after you formed and….have been trying to find a way to share intelligence with you securely.]

 

_she’s quoting somebody…her father? oh Draven you old dog…._

_the girl took a breath._

[About two days ago we were attacked directly. We had warning but their ships came out of a new hyperspace corridor….]

_oh fuck!_

[…..and reached the surface much faster than we expected. They may have thought we were only a low tech-settlement. They laid down fire…..I mean incendiary sweeps….on the only thing that might have looked like a tech settlement to them, an old tower…..]

_Rook shifted slightly….what do you know that i don’t commander?_

[….and small airfield where we keep our limited in-system craft. I’m afraid that…..my parents concern was that they might eventually try to pick off small edge planets to use as depots or automated stations. Our alliance has a plan for that, but somehow this ship got past her….us…A group pf us who were training on the ships were on the field when they attacked. Myself, Ava and Paave managed to get to the shuttle and lift it off. The Order ship stopped its clearance and followed us. They didn’t think we had light speed capability.]

_she was smiling now….a little grimly….“That’s because you barely did,” Dameron was muttering again….the boy was brilliant pilot, a talented officer and a good man….but he could be a little bit of a dick sometimes…._

**on comm:** “What happened to the Order ship? How did you get away? / **voice ID #115-WL/Organa/Army of the Resistance/General**

  
[It tried to follow us…we destroyed it.]

_Dameron was sitting up straight now._

 

 **on comm** : “How?” he asked, “That ship has no weapons.”/ **voice ID/ _ **F** lt. Comdr. Poe , Dameron AR_**

 

[We tricked it…..got it to follow us to the hyperspace corridor and….gave it incorrect navigational data.]

_Rook was chuckling outright …..she remembered him at Endor…..how he had come in with the Bothans and the mysterious “tech” that had helped them crack into the shield generators……clearly somebody was due for a debrief more than 25 years too late…._

 

  
[But we couldn’t get back…..the ship was never meant for sustained travel at light speed….before we lost contact with our…..tower….we were given coordinates to try to get here, to you. We are cut off now. I have no way of finding out what is happening back home, to my parents, our people…or my brother and the others who were with us on the landing field.]

_Rook got up and walked to the other side of the glass, right into the interview room._

 

**_Door opening._ **

[You have a brother? What is his name?] **voice ID/ Bodhi Rook/Army of the Resistance, Cmder.**

[His name is Galen.]

 

**END/Interview/Command Auth./Command Auth./#115-WL/Organa/Army of the Resistance/General**   
**Droid rec/R4-195 31.02.30by9.30.07**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hopefully this works even if you are not among the people who made it through "Over the Edge." 
> 
> if you are, just yell "Portia!" at appropriate points.


	3. WWMD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaylyra Andor and her friends are safe with the Resistance...for now. Bodhi Rook remains the best person who has ever lived.....and Kayly starts trying to figure out her next move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are unfamiliar with the glorious world of Memsa tactile communication/hand signal language see end notes.

  
“Are they well? Jyn? Cassian?”

Bodhi Rook did not ask her immediately. He waited until they had taken her “statement.” General Leia Organa had asked her many very pointed questions.

_Wow. Her jewelry is great. I thought she’d be taller…_

 

 

Kayly found all of her father’s lessons playing over and over in her head, through the whole interview.

_“Slow down.…when you are nervous you’ll talk too fast without realizing it. A second will seem long, far too long, and you'll think they must notice it and get more nervous….but they don’t, they never do. Time is different for the listener than the speaker.”_

_“Breathe in the middle of your sentences, not at the beginning…you aren’t diving….people become uneasy and suspicious when you stop and start randomly, not so much when they see you breathe normally. Use the breath time to choose your words.”_

_“Don’t ever lie if you don’t have to, and if you do, keep it simple and small. Every lie is like a fancy house, once you build it you have to take care of it for as long as it stands, and that is hard hard work.”_

_“Spread your truths thin…like winter butter over a large piece of bread….people will probably be satisfied, and if they ask for more, oblige by giving them just a little more, not all of it.”_

When she was younger she thought he was only talking about being a sharp trader, or dealing with Scavengers or Raiders.

Papa had been in rooms like this….worse rooms than this.

  
_“Portia is hard to understand, for most people. We don’t lie about the work she does but we don’t talk about her as a person without her permission.”_  

Fire can’t hurt Portia. Fire can’t hurt Portia. Fire can’t hurt Portia.

  
_Oh, Galen’s face….oh…_

Rats could run fast when they needed to.

 

_“Every time you approach a ship. Every time you meet a fallen Stranger, all of Ea depends on what you do.”_

 

Papa had been saying it to Conn…. _but it’s me now…Oh, fuck it all, Papa, it’s me._

 

 

These people were the Resistance. They wouldn’t hurt them, but that didn’t mean it was safe.

Papa’s list of people who could be trusted had four names.

Mama’s only had two.

 

 

 

 

  
Ava and Paave, were still in the room they had been taken to first. Someone had brought them water…at least it looked like water….and some food….at least it looked like food.

The stupidly handsome fellow who had been giving her shit about her flying…. _fuck you by the way sir_ ….. had followed/escorted her, as did Bodhi Rook.

Ava laid a hand against her back as she sat down.

 _Me? Oh, Ava_.

She clasped her friend’s free hand with curled fingers, _Reassurance of Health and Wellness_ , and Ava returned the gesture.

“Really?” Kayly said, “because you look like shit.”

“Is this water?” Ava asked, “because it doesn’t taste like water.”

Kayly took a sip. It had a very sort of flat taste, but it was definitely water.

“It’s distilled water, probably,“ Commander Handsome said, “When people show up and they haven’t been bio-checked they usually start them out with distilled water just in case they might have a problem with the local bacteria and just not know it yet.”

Paave was looking rough. She remembered shouting “Don’t touch him!” to the people who’d brought them here, but they had thought that meant that it was better to let the machines, the droids, touch him and that was worse. He’d let out a yell and lurched back and one of the grey jumpsuited people had grabbed him. She and Ava had gotten him calmed down but he probably thought he was dying….talking about bacteria didn’t help.

“Pavy?” she said, “It’s ok. It’s just water.” She took a drink to show him it was safe…. _eeeech, it was warm_ …Ava took a sip too, but a tear was rolling down her cheek. Mems could taste things humans couldn’t, so this probably tasted even worse to her.

 _Oh, Ava….oh hell_ …she’d never had water that wasn’t from home before, not fallen from home sky or bubbled up from home ground.

 _Neither have I_ , Kayly thought.

“I keep telling myself it’s just another Island,” Paave said, “but why does it feel like something has stabbed me in the chest?”

“It’s adrenaline,” Bodhi Rook told him, sitting down in one of the chairs, “You were badly frightened, and a whole new kind of frightened, I’m guessing. It doesn’t mean you aren’t brave, it’s just like…..” he smiled gently, ”a sore muscle, your heart and ribs will ache for a while.”

Paave nodded.

Are you a Far Islander?” Bodhi asked, and turned his two hands palm-up.

 

 _How did he know that?_ It was what one Voyager did when meeting another at sea. _My hands are empty. I mean no harm._

“Mother was,” Paave said, “I was born on the Star Islands, but my father is a Red Trader, I live….I live…with him…on the Sand Flats now.”

 

 

“You are Bodhi Rook?” Ava was saying,

He held his hand out to her now.

“I’m probably out of practice,” he said, smiling, “and I don’t know if anybody told you about my wonky artificial hand, but…” he took Ava’s hand.

Whatever it was, he was trying to say to her ….it might have been _Welcome to a Kin/Friend_ …but Kayly couldn’t tell…..he must have said it funny, because Ava giggled, but she also reached out to clasp both of his hands in hers and kiss them, _Respectful and Affectionate Greeting of a Beloved Elder_.

“Can you feel that?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he whispered back.

The pilot, Commander Dameron the General had called him, was looking on as if he was a little unsure what was happening.

 _Watch and learn pretty boy,_ Kayly thought, _**That** is how a true Ally treats people._

 

 

 

 

 

She went out with Bodhi Rook, the next day, while Paave and Ava rested after talking with some of the doctors/healers. Neither of them had slept well and both of them needed a lie-down.

Kayly had fallen on the cots they gave them to push all together yesterday, and slept like a dead thing for twelve hours….although she wasn’t sure how….and she still felt exhausted, but she desperately needed to talk to Bodhi Rook alone. He had taken her hand at the medical room and given it a few lights taps and a squeeze…not quite….but almost..was that _Wish for Conversation_? It must be, he would not have been asking her to sing him a song.

“Let’s go look at that eccentric little shuttle you came in on,” he said.

They got aboard what was by far the smoothest speeder she had ever ridden on and Bodhi took her out to the far landing area, where the little box shuttle was still sitting, roped off with some kind of tape. When the top closed and the speeder started moving he asked her, “Are they well? Jyn? Cassian?”

_I don’t know, oh Ea, oh Force.. I don’t know._

“I think so,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady, “The First Order ship was probably there to clear a “potential resistance area” area….Papa has, I mean, ….we have seen them do it elsewhere, they are complete and absolute murdering runt-bastards..….it was only one ship and a crew transport. Portia said….before I lost contact with her, that she would “take care of it.” but…..they’ve always skirted around us before…I’m so afraid,” …. _don’t choke up Kayly_ …”what if they know? They are doing something with stellar gases as an energy booster that really pisses Portia off and makes it hard for her to scan while they’re doing it. Papa and Mama were down on the shore and they had Portia’s earpiece and she said they were ok but…..but Galen…he was on the other side of the field when they burned it….I couldn’t see where he went and Portia didn’t know…” _oh fuck…_

She started crying again.

Bodhi Rook stopped the speeder. He put an arm around her and let her put her head onto his shoulder.

“Sometimes nobody can possibly survive, but then somebody does,” he said, “I did, your parents did…..have hope, sometimes the Force just needs certain peoples asses for something…..as a friend of mine used to say.”

  
_She and the Rat had a joke, WWPD……Would Papa Do? Right before you went in to stonewall somebody in a card game or a trade or ice-out some Scavenger punk who was giving you shit at market….or WWMD….What Would Mama Do? Right before you busted some kneecaps._

“Teach me to fly,” she said, sitting up straight and wiping the tears off her face with both hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...yeah, that's a thing from Over the Edge. It's like deaf-blind signing and/or the Masonic handshake without actually being like either of those things. Just go with it.
> 
> Kaylyra is a little rough on Poe Dameron, who is actually a darling hunky and brave boy, but she's having a rough day.


	4. Nothing is Forgotten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ellena Tonc and her children are visited by an Alliance officer, in the days after the Empire's surrender.

 

  
She heard from her ex-husband only once more after the Government of the Imperial Commonwealth of Qemia surrendered.

The last months in the apartment, after Timon was born, were a blur. She had stopped going out much at all. Everyone else in Base Housing Complex knew Keiran was gone, that the tight smile and the “things are going well on Ganthel, but housing is so tricky…he’ll be sending for us soon," as a lie.... their quarrels had hardly been discreet.. Kieran was a dick but he didn't exactly want his children to be homeless. Sooner or later he would submit the Decree of Dissolution of Marriage and Base Security would appear at the door, she knew, but for now his tissue thin conscience was holding.

“You have two children,” Ellana Tonc Croix told herself, “You have to make a plan,” but found she could not.

In the end, it had not been Imperial Base Security that came.

Deron had been watching one of his puppet-play holos for the fortieth time, “The Octave Staircase”. He had it memorized. She had told herself that she would not be one of those parents who let their child watch holos for hours at a time, but she had once told herself a lot of things that turned out not to be true. She heard the shouting, coming from other apartments across the courtyard and what sounded like a woman wailing,

“ _A bombing,_ ” she thought. _“A terrorist attack.”_

So she did the one thing you were not supposed to do and ran out onto the balcony. There was a smell smoke and frying ozone on the wind, blowing over from the direction of the main gates…..but their balcony only faced the courtyard and she couldn't see anything

  
Doren had followed her out. ”Mummy! Speeders, Speeders!” he cried, pointing.

Dozens and dozens of executive transport speeders were heading up and over the walls of the compound. She pulled him inside with her and shut the doors. Other doors in the building were opening and closing, and there were voices shouting, even crying in the hallways, but she only turned up the volume loud on the puppet holo, held the baby and waited. It was not until hours later that an override came on the display. Some Vizier from Courascant was making a statement. The Emperor was dead. Order would be re-established soon.

A little while later another crackling override holo appeared on top of the "official" one. It was a small fair-skinned woman with elaborate dark braids in a high-necked beige uniform. Her arm was in a bandage and she wore a silver chain. The image flickered and the sound was barely audible

This is Leia Organa………of Alderaan, former member of the Galactic Senate, and ……the Alliance to Restore the Republic……. Emperor Palpatine—the greatest tyrant …….. responsible for death and sufferiing……—is dead. He and a second Death Star battle station were destroyed by Alliance forces earlier today…..does not mean the end of the Empire. The fight will continue. But.hope…… Join us in the foundation of a new Republic to be shaped by the will of the governed. Claim your freedom and ……future. Help is on the way……

Ellena closed the curtains and put the boys to bed in the middle of the afternoon. When the power went to generator she did not notice. Sometime the next day there was pounding on the door, and it opened. A tall woman and a young man, both wearing helmets and ragged fatigues and the pale green sashes of the Qemia Resistance Fighters came inside. They had rifles, but lowered them when they saw her and the boys on the couch.

“My husband left six months ago,” Ellena said.

They told her to pack a small bag for the children and come with them. She left everything else behind and her long-discarded wedding ring in a box on the table.

  
Daddy had passed a year before, not that he had really spoken to her for two years before that. One of her cousins had to call and give her the news. When she went to claim his effects in the tiny hospital facility she had found only some old clothes and holos. He and Mum on their wedding day. Herself at seven or so, in a white party dress holding Stordie’s hand as a toddler. Down in the bottom of one drawer she found a boys soccer jersey wrapped around a battered metal box of polished stones, all with old hand-drawn sticky film labels: Cobaltocalcite, Crocoite, Fluorite, a dozen others now too faded to read.

She had taken the box home, but when two year old Doren found it under her bed and tried to play with the pretty rocks inside, he broke one of the square scarlet crystals….Rhodochrosite…..she had found herself shouting at him and sobbing on the floor. Trying to put the lid back on later she found a silicone chip in a fold of the boxes lining. It was just an audio pip. She played it.

“I love you Dad,” her brother’s voice said, “I couldn’t just stand by. I’m sorry but Mum couldn’t stand by and do nothing and I can’t either. I love you, tell Ella I love her too.”

_Mum had been killed in a fire at the Biological Research Station when Ellena was 11 and Stordie was 6. She had gotten out but had run back in to try to save one of the other workers._

The last time she’d seen Stordie was at her wedding reception. He’d gotten into a fist-fight with Keiran’s Supervisor, called him “a fucking murderer” and been wrestled to the ground by restaurant security. She had screamed at him, furious that he was ruining her perfect dream wedding. He’d been a month shy of his eighteenth birthday.

When she was in the “Security Holding Area,” part-prison and part-shelter for low-level Imperial officers, staff and families against the wrath of the rest of the city, she received the Notification of Dissolution of Marriage. It seemed that Keiran had filed it the day before the Battle of Endor. She knew he was still alive because he sent a shop-bought cartoon holo-note for Deron’s name day later, and a few months after that, a short vid requesting  that she co-sign an attached clemency petition confirming him as a father of young children. "You owe me this, Ellena" He had said, he looked thinner, angry. After that, nothing.

According to the "Mercy and Reconcilliation Act", as Article A1793 : Repatriation of and Benefits Eligible to Former Imperial Employees and Dependents came to be called, she and the children were entitled to a portion of Kieran’s settlement. Her mother’s youngest sister came to vouch for her.

When Ellena tried to thank her, Auntie Rhea had said, coldly, “I am here for these children, Ella. You made your choices, but they did not. Except for them, I would have left you to rot.”

It was because the riots continued on and off on Qemia for months, because they had been shuttled between the two family camps and left no forwarding address, and because she had quickly begun using a version of her mother’s maiden name instead of Croix or Tonc,  that the notices took more than a year to reach her. She learned that her brother had still been alive and looking for her, on the same day she learned that Pathfinder Special Operations Sergeant Major Stordan Tonc, age 24, three times decorated for combat valor by the Army of the Alliance to Restore the Republic had been killed leading his men out of a tunnel at the Battle of Jakku, hours before the Surrender had been signed.

  
She found work, as a transport packer, unwilling to fill out the paperwork and face the checks that would have been necessary to go back into Data Design. After a year she was promoted to Project Supervisor. The boys went to school as Doren and Timon Tonc-Levon, and never mentioned their father. Once she saw the husband of one of Keiran’s Security Attaches. They passed each other without speaking and she started taking an earlier transport to work, so afraid was she of seeing the man again.

She had three days off every seven and was nervously watching Deron try out a neighbor girl’s hover-board from the front stoop when she saw the two people walking up the street, looking carefully at housing post numbers.

They would have stood out anywhere. One was a slim, rather handsome man, tanned, with dark hair and trim beard. He wore the khaki dress jacket and dark blue slacks of an Alliance officer, but it was the other person who drew all eyes on their little cul-de-sac. He was…. _and she only knew this from pictures_ ….a Mon Calmari. He was shorter than the man, but not by much, reddish-orange with a great domed skull, and enormous bulbous golden eyes placed on each side of his head. He wore some sort of off-white suit with decorations and had huge hands.

Even before they crossed the street, she somehow knew they were looking for her. She stood up.

The reddish-orange person seemed very interested in the dozen children and the hover-board jump course they had set up from plex-panels and boxes in the narrow street. When one little girl went whizzing close past him, braids flying, too focused on her 360 flip to pay attention, he threw back his large fish-like head and laughed heartily.

“Excellent!” he bellowed in a slightly gurgling voice, “This is very good! “

The dark haired man looked up from a small data clip in his hand and met her eyes. He seemed to recognize her, and tapped the Mon Calmari person on the arm.

Ellena’s heart was pounding so loud she could hear it.

“Ellena Tonc,” the man said, as they walked toward her on the front step. He held out his hand, “My name is Bodhi Rook,” he said, “I am a friend of your brother’s.” The Mon Calmari nodded beside him. Unable to think of what to say, and feeling both awkward and exposed on the street, she invited them inside and offered them tea.

The boys hung back shyly, but Commander Rook, as the Mon Calmari called him, gave her a box of clips and medals.

“You will not see his name in the history books,” the fish-person, said, in his low booming voice, “Not soon. Because wars are such ugly things that people can only bear to look at them in trimmed parts….but nothing is forgotten. Come to Mon Cala,” here he looked at the boys, Timon on her lap and Deron holding his board in the doorway, “we can bear to see both the middle and the edge,” he rolled his great eyes a little in two different directions, which was terrifying but made Timon laugh. “No," he said, serious now, and laying a great webbed hand beside Ellena’s, “When they are older bring them to Mon Cala, they will learn the whole story there , and for his sake there will always be welcome there for you.”

 

She sat with Bodhi Rook late into the evening, while he told her stories about Stordie….funny ones about ugly animals on an ice planet, and trying to play Liars Poker with a wookie…and stories about how relentlessly, tirelessly brave he was, and how he never left anyone behind. He did not ask her anything about herself, the mistakes she had made, or her life before.

“That’s not why I’m here,” he said.

Timon showed Commander Rook the rock collection,.

Out on the street, as the streetlights came on, Doren and the other children showed Admiral Gail Ackbar, Commander of the Fleet of the Alliance and, Supreme Admiral of the Navies of Mon Cala how to ride a hoverboard. By the time they left he could do a Backside 180 Ollie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes. Admiral Ackbar learns to skateboard.....picture it, it will make you happy.


	5. The Old Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bodhi Rook and Kaylyra Andor visit Davits Draven in his retirement, ostensibly to ask questions for Leia Organa, but also to stir the ashes of the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> because the hard-headed but guilt-ridden Davits Draven is a character I cannot let go. Dr. Thorn is one of my favorite OtE characters and even morally grey old SOBs get a little angsty-love in my universe.

Behave,” Thorn said, shoving a tray of tea things into his hands.

There was a spider web in the sugar bowl.

“Since when do we give people tea?” Draven asked.

“It’s too early in the day for whiskey. Besides, Rook doesn’t drink alcohol, and that child can’t be a day over nineteen,” his spouse was dabbing quickly at the cups with a cloth, “They came all this way, we have to offer them something. Take this in and behave yourself.”

“What exactly are you thinking I am going to do?”

_Interrogate them? Recruit them…for what, exactly? They’re already in the bloody Resistance. Flirt with a girl young enough to be my granddaughter?_

“B-e-h-a-v-e,” Thorn enunciated carefully and poked him lightly in the chest with a teaspoon.

 

In the end, the tray was passed to the kitchen droid and he was made to bring in the hot water. Until this exact moment Davits Draven had been unaware that there was even a teapot in his house, much less a sugar bowl. He felt as if he had wandered into a costume-history drama vid.

Rook stood, at attention, for the barest second as he entered the room and a lot of time seemed to flicker away in that instant

 _At ease, Commander,_ he almost said.

The moment passed. Rook seemed to laugh a little, as if realizing the foolishness of what they were both doing.

_We have that in common, you and I Rook, a little of that old Imperial discipline left in our bones._

The pilot held out a hand, “It’s good to see you, sir,” he said.

 _Is it, Rook?_ Draven wondered, grasping the calloused fingers of a working mechanic, _surely if we had not failed somehow, if the fires we set ourselves to fight were truly out, you and I would have never met again._

“You’re looking very fit Rook,” he said. "As I’m sure you know, Thorn takes full credit and is ridiculously proud.”

His dear shot him a warning look from the far side of the table.

It took a great deal of effort into not stare at the young woman. She stood up when Rook did, clearly looking to him for clues as to how she should act here. She wore a blue jacket, pale grey shirt, those Corellian slacks with the side stripe that were all the fashion again now, and a pair of scuffed blue leather boots

Rook’s manners, as always, when he wasn’t under duress, were gentle and correct.

“General Draven, this is Kaylyra.” he said.

_Oh blessed Force, they named a child after a droid._

The girl held out a hand, palm up for an instant, then turned it to shake hands normally.

It was a slim but very firm hand. What ever it was she did, it must be the kind of work that kept her fingers strong, almost a musician’s hand.

He found himself looking at an unlined, heart-shaped face with Cassian Andor’s dark hair and arched brows framing Jyn Erso’s fierce green eyes.

 _If Justice personified had appeared at his door,_ he suddenly realized, _this is how he would have expected her to look._

 

 

 

 

  
Intelligence operations had continued on military footing for almost three years after Jakku. Then the word came down. The Military Disarmament Act had gone through. Organa had fought it tooth and nail but the galaxy was exhausted by decades of war. A New Republic Senate was floundering and had restructured to hold together. The fledgling governments of the Mid-Rim worlds were filled with former Separatists who found they feared a resurgent and armed Republic they **could** see as much or more than any defiant but broken handful of the "Imperial Remnant" they could **not** see, nothing but a rumor in the Unknown Regions.

They were ordered to hand over or shut down their webs of far stations and access codes to covert receivers.

"Your operatives," Aerin had said. It was his decision.

He passed through the official order, then sent one last piggyback message out.

“new landlord….last round...porch light...question....snow."

_They are shutting you down. Come home now and we will find away to bring you in. Otherwise..melt away and leave no trace. There will be no further support._

 

Sometimes there was a delay. Lines were not always clear. He had deliberately never tried to triangulate their location or kept any record of the patterns of the repeater trail…. _not since Hoth_. He had a rough idea where their little frontier refuge was, but he made sure there was no hard record. When the response came, a day later, it was wrapped around a large data bundle. Maps, data screens, position points, echoed comm readings, energy signatures. Views of the back end of the Modell System and the Unknown Regions that no other station had ever been able to give them. The kind of data that had saved thousands at Voronia and Jakku.

“repeat….query….weather….cold….clouds remaining”

_Are you sure? We are still active. There is still actionable data here._

 

He passed that last packet on to the new Intel head, along with his and Cracken’s analysis and strong recommendations that the project continue. The order was sent back, unchanged.

He had no choice. He re-sent the original message.

A delay might have been expected. Somewhere a man and a woman were deciding their fate. You’d think it would take a while.

The reply came back almost immediately.

“summer”

He initiated the shut down sequence and burned out all the dedicated receivers. It was all he could do to protect them. Every trace of "Alliance Intelligence/ Operation Lighthouse” was erased, leaving no record behind, save in the memories of a few old soldiers.

  
_Goodbye Andor. Good luck._

 

 

 

 

 

He had been ordered to hand over all data and files regarding wartime and post-surrender operations, as well as to to destroy every redundant copy within AARR files, so he did. He was not specifically ordered to make no personal copies, so he did. Aerin remained on the Intel Committee, but his role was now largely “advisory.” Draven continued on in Analysis, but his notes seemed to go largely unread.

After a year of this ratcheting agony he “retired.”

When he went over to Medical for his exit health assessment, Dr. Thorn was not there. This concerned him since Thorn had been at every bloody annual he had had for the last four years.

_‘Why is the Head of Field Medicine for the Armies of the New Republic doing staff physicals?” he said each time, ‘It seems a tremendous waste of resources.”_

_“Cardiac Research,” had always come the answer from the other side of the scanner._

 

“Where the hell is Doctor Thorn,” he had asked, realizing he sounded very much like a cranky old man who wants his favorite nurse. The med-droids clearly thought so too but they went and got him a supervisor, who went and got a department head … _he was still a bloody General after all_ … who informed him that Doctor Ty Thorn had retired three months previously. Draven obtained the address…. _he was still in Intelligence after all_ …at a military apartment complex on Hosnian Prime, on the far side of the Capitol.

“What the hell are you doing here? Am I under arrest?” was the greeting he got when the door was answered. Draven was still in uniform,…. _.for a few more days at least…_ …. but Thorn was in pajamas at three in the afternoon……not a good sign. Doctors made the worst patients.

The conversation started with bad caff and continued directly to decent beer.

“Why are you still here? If you’re teaching you could go anywhere. Travel. Go home." Draven said.

Thorn had looked up at him across the small table, by then littered with cups, empty crisp packets and pint glasses, genuinely startled.

“Honestly…how did we even win this war? You must be the worst spy ever born.” The doctor gave a short harsh laugh and ran hands through messy silver hair. “I’m from Alderaan.”

There followed a long uncomfortable silence, during which Thorn stood up and went into the fresher. The water was turned on very loudly and almost covered the sound of crying. Draven did not leave, although that was clearly what was expected of him. When Thorn finally came out again, dressed. The General was still sitting at the table, having poured two more beers.

“Come home with me, then,” he said.

He had found, sitting there, that the thought of going back to his Grandfather’s land on Pendarr alone was unendurable.

 

 

 

  
  
Now the child of Cassian Andor and Jyn Erso was standing in front of him, on his grandmother's dining room floor

Thorn paced back and forth, as well as a person can pace with a cane, to the kitchen while they talked. Hearing and not hearing, as was Thorn’s wont.

Rook had brought messages from Organa for him to watch….. _she waited a whole five minutes in before calling him a bastard, which he took to be a sign that age was mellowing her_ ……and a careful report on the activities of the Resistance.

“I gave her everything I had. That whole last bundle, and the few other files I had kept for…documentation,” Draven told Rook. He combed through his  words carefully, trying to remove any trace of self-excusing.

_This was Organa, possibly the only person in the galaxy who would despise the words “I tried” as much as he did._

He had spent the last fifteen years prizing apart that last bundle from “Lighthouse.” Amongst all the other data he had found clues that should have been followed a decade ago.

  
[……. **contingency]** …. _“Contingency” had been the name for Palapatine’s cultist suicide squads on Jakku_ ….[ **Sloane….Hux** ]… _two high level Imperial Fleet Commanders, unaccounted for at or after Jakku, because tossing yourself on your Imperial master’s funeral pyre had clearly not been to everybody’s taste_ …..[ **c generators** ]… _.the top secret Imperial tech that had enabled the construction of temporary hyper-space corridors to Endor, supposedly all destroyed after the battle_ … [ **first order implementation** ]….. _the first recorded use of that term_ …[ **conflict in command** ]……. _the fleeing Imperial remnant had been quarreling among themselves at that point_ ….if only they had acted then, kept pursuing, things might be different now.

He had filed his reports. One old man could not act alone.

He was so far out now, his links to whatever the bloody hell was passing as Intelligence in the New Republic where dust.

Through it all the girl sat and listened gravely. She had not yet spoken more than eight words, half of which were “Thank you for the tea.”

Thorn had been standing in the doorway, and now coughed loudly, "Bodhi Rook," the doctor said, "I need some help with making lunch."

 _The bloody hell you do_ , Draven thought. _Droids can open cans_.

Rook dutifully stood to obey, dropping a hand lightly on the girls shoulder as he passed behind her chair. Reassuring, like a doting uncle.

Kaylyra Andor's arrival at Organa's Resistance base....Yavin IV..... _the woman's facility for political symbolism was still unrivaled_.... had been described to him. 

She spoke first, mercifully.

"You were my father's commanding officer in the war." It wasn't a question. He nodded.

She leaned forward, young and fierce.... _oh Force, who did that remind him of?_... “These people who are attacking my home, do you know who they are?”

_He hadn’t known them personally, Sloane and Hux, they were third tier at best in the Imperial hierarchy as he’d known it, Destroyer Commanders and errand boys, even if it they had been the ones to lay the foundations, they’d be old men by now._

“I know what they are,” he said.

She nodded, still not looking directly at him.

“It was only stories to Galen and I,” she said, “Until I was thirteen, and found out what the stories really meant. You need to understand...My parents are….leaders where I come from. People look to them for….help and advice. They’re respected, as….the word we use is “allies.”

 _They were neither of them the type to “melt away”,_ he supposed.

“Was my Mama’s father a criminal?”

 _Which one?_  He wondered. _Jyn Erso remained a mystery to him on many levels, but he doubted very seriously that she had told her children very much about Saw Gerrera._

“Galen Erso?” he asked, “No, at one point in his life he may have been a fool, but he was not alone in that sin. In the end…he was a hero, I’ve come to believe.”

She seemed to be gathering her thoughts.

_One more question before his turn.Three and Three….oh Andor, does she know this because you taught her how to do an interview? or did she pick it up by watching?_

She asked her last question.

“Papa…my father,” she bit her bottom lip, slightly….. _she had a few tells, she was good, very good, a natural but not professional....hopefully she would never need to be_ …..”I know that he had to….do awful things” she took a breath, and looked straight at him now with Erso’s pitiless green eyes. ”what was the worst thing you ever asked him to do?”

_Damn. She **was** good. Justice, indeed._

As if I know all the things he had to do alone out there in the dark, child? 

But that wasn't true. He did know.

_Forgive me Andor, but if she’s here now, if it’s all begun again, if you’ve found it necessary to teach your little girl to play with a hard ball, then I’d be doing you both a disservice to pitch less._

“Nothing,” Davits Draven said, “he had to do nothing. In order to finish a mission, to save many, many other lives, he had to stand by and watch innocent people hurt and murdered, and do nothing to stop it until he was ordered to.”

It nearly killed him.

  
Then Draven took his turn to ask three questions.

 

 

 

 

Thorn brought in lunch, which was their usual cold salmon and crackers, except two cans instead of one and served on plates.

They could not stay any longer. Whatever flight cover their sympathizers in New Republic Transit Command had cooked up for them, it was unwise to try to make it hold for long. Draven doubted anyone watched him anymore, but it was not worth taking chances.

 

Thorn hugged Rook goodbye as if he were a long-lost child….which perhaps he was, in a way, and shook the girl’s hand with warm delight.

_The only thing better than saving people was saving them long enough to reproduce, apparently._

Draven insisted on walking them down to the gates, where Rook had left their rental speeder, via the stone steps, since he knew Thorn could not follow them that way, and he had one more question to ask.

 

"Rook," he said, “Miss Andor, there was only one thing I didn't pass on to General Organa, partly because I had no idea what it meant and still don’t. A message string was bundled around that last transmission. It took me a long time to transcribe on my own. At first I thought it might be over-recorded poetry, or some kind of code, but it wasn't one I'd ever seen. It didn't sound like anything I'd expect from either Andor or Jyn Erso."

"What did it say sir?" Bodhi Rook asked.

Draven didn't have to look it up. He still had it memorized.

"Keep watch. It whispers now but I can still hear it and the only word it ever says is death.”

Rook looked at the young woman, seeming to yield to her authority, as if this were some decision that she alone could make about whether or not Draven should be trusted.

“Well,” she said, quietly. “That was probably Portia, She can be a bit of a fucking drama queen sometimes."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At some point Draven's three questions may come up.


	6. Ava

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ava tells her story of how she and her friend Kaylyra Andor came find the Resistance on Yavin IV. Bb8 has regrets.

It was worse for Paave than for any of them, or so it seemed to Ava.

Kayly was brave, had always been brave, even when they were little more than nurslings. Not the stupid kind of brave, like poking a stick in a lizard hole and running, or putting a fire bug on your tongue for a dare, but the real kind that faced down Scavenger bullies....even when she KNEW that she was likely to get bit......or went to Eldest Sister and told the truth about what had really happened to the five pies. She taught herself how to walk in the dark on the trails, even though humans were just about dead blind in the dark. When Cassian-ally had asked who would take the first turn to try the controls on the practice ship and make the engines push them up, Kayly had raised her hand first.

Sometimes, she could wrap brave around her like it was anger, just light up with it. Like that time years ago when she had run in to pull that baby Taun away from the Lizard that had been hiding in a ditch.

That's what she had done this time and she had carried them both with her.

The black ship had come out of nowhere. There had been a faint roar in the heavy grey rain clouds over their heads, and, almost at the same instant, the ear-splitting shriek of Portia-the-ancient-ghost's warning cry. Then BOOM! It was over their heads.

All of Time's pattern seemed to stop.

 _This is what the mouse feels when she sees the owl,_ Ava thought between heartbeats _._

_Oh Ea, I think I will never be able to eat another mouse in my whole life._

Ava remembered where everyone had been standing. Paave had been walking toward the ship, still too scared to touch it but wanting to peek in the door and Kayly was turning to take him. Ava was going with them but had stopped and twisted her head to look back at Galen and Kemmi and Galen's human friend from HarborTown whose name she could never remember. They were more than halfway to the pine ridge. Galen was walking extra fast because he was so angry. He had been trying to take his friend inside the ship and Kayly had "busted" them and said that "Papa"...which was her special name for Cassian-ally.....had told them to stay out.

Siblings fought, and Kayly and Galen were no different. They got in some real snappers sometimes. She'd said something and he'd said something and she said, "You fucked up, Rat and the ship's off limits until Papa says otherwise."

"Bite me, Queenie!" Galen snarled and stomped away.

Ava liked Galen and knew he was snappish because he had been up late playing knuckebones and drinking beer with Kemmi who was still sad, because his grandmother had died. She thought she maybe should run over and tell Galen that Kayly was actually just extra snappish-bossy because Jyn and Cassian-ally had not let her go to HarborTown with them and she was worried.

Then came the roar and the warning and a far-way clicking sound and Kayly saying "Fuck."

Galen and the other boys heads turned, way way over the field as fire poured out of the bottom front of the black shape over the Tower hill. It poured down across like water, a river of it.

"Run! Galen! Run!" Kayly screamed and Paave just plain screamed. Kayly's fingers dig into Ava's shoulder.

"The ship! Go!" Her mouth said, although the sound was getting swallowed up.

_Ships go so fast that friction, the same thing that heats your hands when you rub them fast together, will rub the air into fire around them. That was why fresh wrecks and falls were hot. Everybody knew that._

The ship was fireproof.

They dove inside, throwing Paave to the floor. Ava pulled the hatch closed as the orange light licked around the edges.

Kayly was scrambling into the seat up front, the window screen was solid grey, it did that in fire....and was gasping instructions to herself "left hand, ignition, green....light switch...up...1,23..."

Then a voice came from inside the walls. It was Ancient Portia.

"Who is this?"

""Kayly!"

"You've started ignition. You have to release the landing lock. Take the altitude controls and hold them steady. You need to take the ship up. When you can see, in 2 seconds, pull back and up."

"I ...I don't know how!"

"They will follow you. You have to lead them away before they can make another pass."

"Portia!..,"

"I will tell you what to do. NOW, Kaylyra."

Ancient Portia did not shout but she was loud. She told Kayly what to do and Kayly did it.

_"Another pass" meant Nexa.....somehow Ava knew._

She crawled over to Paave who had slid across the floor.

"Come on," she said. "We need to tie ourselves with the belts." She buckled him. He buckled her, with shaking hands. He really was a good child.

 The sky outside the "cockpit" window.....why did they call it that  it was stupid, as if they kept birds in it or something..... turned blue and then white and then black.

She felt a straining pain under her heart.

 _I am the first,_ she thought _, of all the Memsa of Ea....I am the first to leave._

She didn't know how she knew it but she did.

Kayly was brave. She only cried once.

Ancient Portia told her what ways to turn and what to push and they were tossed around like a bottle stopper. Ava got sick but Paave didn't.

Portia said, "Kayly. They know I'm blocking them. They are trying to get around me. You need to go into the Stream. I can give them a wrong push there and kill them, but you have to make them go in."

"Portia, please...the ship can't....we'll die...

"You may but I hope not. I can't tell. I am giving your ship a place to go. It may still be safe there. When the comp tells you to drop out, in seven hours, push the sequence. Try to land the way Cassian taught you. I will lose sight of you once you go in."

Kayly was crying now, "Tell Mama and Papa and Galen..."

Ava could not take her hand to help her, she had to help Paave.

"Kaylyra. There was another ship. It has been destroyed and we must kill this one or they will find us. There is no time. Do as Cassian and Jyn taught you. I will tell your parents you love them. NOW."

"Ava, Pav, I'm sorry." Kayly said.

The window was covered with lines and Ava felt all the air pressed out of her, it was as if she fainted, or went blind for a while, hours maybe even.

Paave was the one who unbuckled and went forward to help. He said that Kayly sat still in the seat and kept her hands close to the controls,.....the "tiller" he called it, which was an ocean ship thing.... and waited for the signal and she didn't cry at all. They "dropped", and the ship lurched an jumped and there were suddenly people yelling from the walls, but none of them were Portia.

They had to get out of the ship then and the human Resistance soldiers had guns and shouted as if they thought the three of them were Raiders. Kayly called them assholes, which is usually bad policy when people have guns, but that's how angry she was.

_The three of them were Heart Companions now, on a quest and a terrible journey, they would be bound together in each other's pattern forever in life and in death._

"I have to be the one to talk to them ," Kayly said, as they unbuckled and crawled out to the shouting humans, and that was protocol for sure.

As bad as it was, once she touched ground and grass, Ava was still afraid but she stopped feeling like she was already dead. Paave though....getting touched by strangers without the right words was awful enough for Islanders, but the worst was when the machines touched him. He was so afraid of them.

She wasn't afraid of them, as such. The round one chirped like a bird and sang to itself. It clearly loved one of the humans and followed it... _him_?... _her_?... it was so hard to tell......everywhere.

They gave them some bad tasting water and tried to be kind after that. Kayly was taken away to talk to a small woman who seemed to be in charge of everything and came back with a person who looked very much like Cassian-ally. It was Bodhi Rook. Ava stopped being afraid then. They were amongst heroes, inside a Teaching Story.

Kayly had been so brave for so long she couldn't bear it any more. She broke down and cried and cried. Bodhi Rook half-carried her over to where they gave them beds and she lay down and slept for hours and hours.

Paave and Ava lay down beside her.

She had gotten him to drink some of the water but the food tasted like sand.

Paave lay for a long time, staring up at a dark stone ceiling far far above them, while Kayly slept. Ava held his hands but he was an Islander and didn't always understand.

"I can't ever go home," he said.

She kissed his hands and after a while he did manage to go to sleep.

Ava tried to rest, but she was thirsty, so she went to get some more water from the jars they had shown them by the other bunks.

The little round "droid" was peering out from around the end. Turning around like a plump one-eyed quail.

The person it loved was standing there too. It chirped and looked up at them.

"Bb8's not used to people being afraid of him."

 _I know,_ Ava thought _, it's a ball. Balls are a friendly shape._

"I'm sorry we frightened you,"  the ball-droid's friend said, "let your friend know we'll do whatever we can to help. We'll find a way to get him home as soon as we can."

_He or she was trying to be very decent, she could tell._

"He's a Far Islander," Ava tried to explain, knowing the person probably couldn't understand, "He's never supposed to touch working machines. He's exiled from his Island forever now. They'll never let him come home."

The ball made a sad noise. It obviously felt terrible about this.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Memsa-eye view. Sorry it's the old science fiction writer in my soul.
> 
> Things to know: Most humans are indistinguishable to Memsa.  
> Traditional Far Islanders are technophobes.


	7. Names

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaylyra Andor and her friends adapt to life on Yavin Base. Poe Dameron is a nice guy and brings a fruit basket, he also shows them a secret tribute from one set of heroes to another.

“Are there oceans here?” Pavy asked.

 

They were sitting near the mouth of one of the huge stone buildings, under a canvas tarp, eating with the other trainees. All three of them had lost a lot of weight since coming here, but Pavy especially. Everyone was being very nice and had started sharing with them anything fresh, fruits or vegetables, whatever they could find or trade for that didn't taste like sawdust. Things also got better once they realized that part of what made eating so hard for him was that droids served a lot of the food…. _tall skinny ones with flat hands that scooped things out and put them on plates_ ….whic was still stressful for him.

 

_“I’m not trying to…” he'd told Kayly, deeply ashamed, “ I just.... I choke up a little.” Kayly and Ava made a point of being the ones to pick up the food and bring it over to him after that and it got easier._

 

 

They still spent most of their down time together, but Kayly was taking flight instruction now and they all began to meet and talk to other fighters. Most of the people involved in the Resistance were either pretty old…..like Bodhi Rook, and the General, or pretty young like Jeffa, and Kori and Dameron…and them. Most of them were humans too, although not all. Ava began to be approached by a few other non-human people who wanted to make sure she was comfortable. There were several Tarsunts, from a place called Sullest and three Bothans, who were all fairly furry, but no Memsa of course.

Commander Dameron even came and said hello, once in a great while. He seemed to feel responsible for them somehow.

Ava was very fond of him, in no small part because he was always accompanied by his round-ball droid-friend which made it easy for her to recognize him. Paave found BB8 less terrifying than most of the other droids because he had no parts that stuck out, so the odds that he would jab you seemed less likely.

_Although he did roll right over Kayly's bare foot once and beeped apologetically for almost an hour....he was a funny little guy._

Kayly got the feeling Dameron felt bad about being an ass to them,.... _although he certainly hadn’t been the only one_...., when they first came.  He apologized, so she stopped giving him shit about it. Also he was just stupidly good-looking.

“Really?” Ava said, “Really?

“Confirmed,” Kayly said, “As male humans go, he’s a biscuit.”

“Oh!” Ava said, “Is he like the Fisher at RiverTown with the long red hair at that you wanted to get Active with at the market?”

“Oh don’t even!” Kayly said, slapping the back of her friends wrist in Your Attempt at Humor is In Poor Taste. “Dameron’s not quite that pretty, but at least he’s smarter than a dock post.”

“Does he have his own boat?” Ava said, in all earnestness, “That’s supposed to be an attractive quality.”

“If you are talking about Commander Dameron," one of the other diners, a tall flight tech named Rikkon with a thick blonde mustache, said with a smile “I feel obliged to tell you that the line is very long and, alas...doesn’t move very quickly.”

Half the flight trainees laughed out loud.

Dameron was almost never seen on Yavin Base anyway. He commanded a "kick-ass" flight crew, Black Squadron, and when he wasn’t on missions or rushing from place to place, with his round pal rocketing along beside him, he was with the General, or the other pilots.

 

 

 

He did stop by again though, on that hot day as they were eating under the tarp awning with bag containing a dozen fist-sized fruit.

They were golden orangish yellow and round, with a thin eatable skin and a long thin pit inside. Delicious, they smelled like honey and tasted like ripe Coast Plums.

“I brought this for you guys,” Dameron said. “They were ripe down by the fuel depots at the Southern Coast, and I know how hard the rations can be when you aren’t used to them.” He sat down at the table with them, took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and started showing how to peel back the skin and cut slices around the big seed in the center. He seemed genuinely delighted to be sharing something he took pride in, like a Fisher who shows you the secret best shellfish bed, that only he knows about, or an older, wiser playmate showing nurslings how to trim pinecones for the best nuts.

_Kayly seriously considered getting in line at that point, but the look on Pavy’s face made her think she’d probably better move a spot back and give him her number._

It might not be a good idea, potential broken-heart-wise, but that’s never the way crushes work, even when your whole universe isn’t wrecked, the way Pavy’s was.

_Oh Paave._

_You could see why he was soft on the pilot though, there was just something very “Far Islander”-like about Dameron, and not just the dark hair, the kindness and the long stride. The bastard was “dashing”, whatever that meant and, tall as he was, Paave was only 15 so crushes were easy to fall into, even under the best of circumstances.._

  
“You said ‘Coast’,” Pavy was asking the pilot, “Do you have oceans here? Have you seen them?”

“We have beautiful oceans,” Dameron said, “I grew up here. My parents bought land on Yavin IV after Jakku, when they were decommissioned from the Army of the New Republic….I was four, I guess. My father still lives down there, near the South Coast.” He laughed, in a way that was more rueful than cheerful, “Most people had to leave home to join the Resistance. I had to come home.”

Ava clapped her hands in delight. The idea that this hot leafy place was someones “home” seemed to comfort her immensely. “Do you live in a stone house?” She pointed back towards the massive stepped temple.

“No!,” the pilot laughed, genuinely this time, “A wooden one. My father built it himself. These ruins are very old. Did they not give you the tourist speech when you got here? All through the central valley there are the remains of what used to be…..a great city, I was always told…although it’s still kind of a mystery. Nobody really knows who built them, or where they went. They are deep and empty and they fuck up scanners. Archeology has been done here on and off, between the wars. There was a vacation camp in the winter break seasons when school kids from the coastal settlements used to come here and camp and help on digs. It didn’t last long.”

He sighed for a moment and looked at the towering structures that lined back up the forest floor, some hidden by the massive trees or half covered by vegetation.

“It was always weird for me,” he said, as if he were looking at one thing but seeing another on top of it.

_…..like a Far-Voyager, or Papa sometimes._

Dameron shook his head, as if clearing his vision, and laughed at himself. “It was MY archeology, too, you see. My parents met here…..you get a few drinks in my dad and he’ll start telling stories….whoo.., it’s why I fly X-wings and not Y-wings….is all I’ll say.”

Kayly suspected that she was the only one who understood that bit.

_Ouch, thanks Commander, I now officially know way too much about you, and we’ve barely met._

“Wait,” he said, reaching for one of the wet cloths stacked at the end of the table, and wiping his sticky hands, “I have to go up to Main Base. Come with me, I’ll show you something.”

They had time left before training and besides, he outranked just about everyone else on the field, so they went with him on one of the little speeders.

The large ziggurat on central "plaza" was what people usually meant when they said "Main Base.” It had the widest opening. Transport shuttles still came in and out there, but the wide interior was now mostly used for the equipment. The comm center was there. The General was moved to different parts of the base constantly, but she was often here. This was where they'd first brought them when they landed.

"This was flight control during the Battle of Yavin," Dameron was saying. He took them through the main bays, far back into the dark cool interior. Temporary walls had been put up, large comm consoles blinked and displays sparkled in mid-air. Various people waved to Dameron as they passed and he greeted them in return. The four of them passed through all the way to a back wall, where a square pillar leaned against a doorway down into one of the interior passageways. It was three times Kayly's height and although crates and boxes were stacked haphazardly everywhere else, the area around this slab was clear. The pilot stepped around to the side of it and motion lights on the ceiling tracks in the tunnel brightened in response.

Names were carved into the golden brown stone, as if scratched with small pointed tools, neatly, in rows, ….from the look of it by several different hands.

Kayly read the first name, _**Antoc Merrick**_.

Dozens more followed.

“It was totally illegal, not that anybody thought about those things then,” Dameron said. "This is a protected archeological site, and you still can't get anybody to admit to ever doing it or seeing it done, but...." he ran his fingers lightly over the incised lines, “before the Fleet pull-out, after the Battle, squads just came down here with laser picks and started carving names....the pilots who died over Scarif, then, ...." he crouched down and pointed to another list of names, the first read " ** _Bl. 1st Div. Gunner Rav Bisten_** " There were about two dozen more names after that. "Those are the ground teams that got dropped....most of them were Jedhan volunteers."

Above and to the right of that list, in the shadow of the wall, was one other shorter set of names. Fourteen, most of them carved by the same hand.

“There’s a replica on Mon Cala, they tell me, I’ve never seen it, ” Dameron went on, “that includes all the names from Profundity as well.”

She knew all these names, ” ** _Cassian Andor_** , **_Ruescott Melshi_** , **_Taidu Sefla_** , **_Sandra Bereen_** , **_Serchill Rostok_**...." She read down to a last few, which looked carved by a different hand: " ** _Baze Malbus_** , **_Chirrut Imwe_** , **_J_ yn _Erso_** ,” then “ ** _K2S0_** ," and last, looking the most freshly cut, " ** _Storden Tonc_**."

 

"It's like the stones in your mother's garden," Paave said.

"Papa and Mama are here," Kayly ran her fingers over her father's name. This was her archeology too.

"They aren't dead," Ava said, gripping the back of her hand, Reassurance When Troubled, "They are not."

 

"They thought they were, then,” Dameron said, "when the base was dismantled after the Battle. There were only a few people who knew about Rogue One, and even fewer who would talk about it." He pointed to the first few names, "There's a story that some General came down here after the first set, the names of the lost pilots, ”mysteriously" appeared, and carved most of these himself, the Pathfinders and Spec Ops people at least, in broad daylight in front of everyone. The last few,....your mom and the others, I guess Rook must have done those."

“Oh no. Commander Rook left Yavin IV in a batca-tank, as I recall, with only one hand really still attached,” came a voice from behind them, “I think he must have added Stordan Tonc’s name when he returned here last year, but I did some of the others, just a few days after we destroyed the first Deathstar…..Malbus and Imwe, someone else had already added your father and mother.”

“I suppose,” General Organa said, “Somebody ought to arrest me, or at least issue a citation.”

 

 

Dameron went off with the General to some sort of meeting, although she gave them permission for Kayly to drive the speeder back...since she was the General and could pretty much authorize anything. 

 

They stayed and looked at the names for a long time. Paave even went and asked someone for some pieces of wrapping paper and began rubbing some of the red chalk from outside on it, to trace the names.

 

"For your parents," he said, "When we get home." He smiled. It was the first time since they'd come here that he'd ever talked about home.

 

As Poe Dameron left with Leia Organa, Ava ran after him and asked a question. He bent down and told her something Kayly couldn't hear.

"What did you ask him?" Kayly wanted to know when she came back

"I asked him if they ever found big blue squares here....he said not yet."

_Oh Ava, be careful._

Before they went back out, Ava tiptoed a ways into one of the tunnels, where some shallow niches were. Nothing was stored back there but boxes, but she laid a hand on the stone.

"Hello," she whispered. "If you can hear me. Thank you."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OtE reader, again feel free to yell "Portia!" at appropriate spots.


	8. Teachers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaylyra Andor reflects on her school days back on Ea, she also spends time with Leia Organa and considers her impressions of the General.

 

"In some ways she is like Jyn-ally," Ava said.

“Mama? In what ways?" Kayly asked, "the swearing?"

"Yes, that for sure, but also she is almost normal-sized and she tells everybody what to do," her friend said thoughtfully. "She walks very differently from her though. The General walks like a Taun, as if she is following some path only she can see."

 

If Leia Organa slept, nobody knew when she did it. She had no regular assigned quarters, for security reasons, and seemed to appear on different parts of the base almost without warning at any hour of the day or night. She was usually accompanied by a human-shaped gold-colored droid that babbled incessantly about seemingly random nonsense. Everyone hated it. The General herself seemed to ignore it most of the time although if it was too loud or obviously bothering people she would say, "Be quiet 3P0," firmly over and over until it did. The creature followed her everywhere, and if it was too slow on its stiff legs she would wait for it, sometimes even reaching back a hand to touch it.

"Why does she keep him with her " Ava had asked Bodhi Rook. "She doesn't love him like Commander Dameron loves Bb8."

_Who could?_

"It's been with her since she was a girl," Bodhi said.

_Since Alderaan then._

 

_Kayly had learned about Alderaan when she was young, in Portia’s lessons, although not specifically about the Deathstar and what it had done,... until she was ten. Papa had been most insistent about that. She was also not allowed to talk about it to her brother, until he was ten._

_“Cassian feels that it is developmentally inappropriate to talk about murder on such a scale before a child has a very secure sense of self and I agree,” her ghostly tutor had said._

_“This is what we fought against, ” Papa told her, after that lesson, “something that would let that happen, make that happen, as you get old enough to understand, you will have to know.”_

_Mama had said nothing, but nodded, pale and serious answering Kayly's questions when she asked them._

 

 

 _Was that strange droid really all she had left?_   Like Mama's mothers necklace only a million times worse. It was awful beyond anything Kayly could imagine. _How could you live?_

Yet General Organa was not visibly tragic, not remotely fragile. She wore her hair in elaborate braids, wore heavy silver rings, impeccable make-up and combat boots. She smiled but almost never laughed, glared at people if she thought they said something stupid, complained about the slow holo-displays, sometimes kicked the consoles, and swore like a HarborTown fish cleaner if she spilled her caf.

 

  
Kaylyra started taking Flight Training with ten other recruits. It was by far the hardest school she had ever been in.

She and her brother had had Lessons with the Sisters at their farm along with the other kids in their village. Botany, Music, Medicine.

Portia had given her..... _and Galen, and often Dex, and Bill, Dora and Kemmi, Fox and Sela, whichever children wanted to come_ …… Lessons as well, from the time she was six or so. Physics, Science, Engineering, Math.

Sometimes Portia lectured as “herself”, talking and filling the tower with pictures and numbers, but usually she found them teaching holos on various subjects from other places and spliced them together. She would answer any question  you ever asked her... _.if you could understand the answer, at least._.. but occasionally  when Portia was lecturing, interruptions seemed to derail her a little like when Galen said, not wanting to have to watch a whole vid, "Portia, can't you just **tell** me how an ion engine works?"

She had tilted her head.... _or the head of whatever human she had been looking like that day._...and said, "Please try not to be offended Galen but I still can't quite figure out how you people learn anything at all."

Papa and Mama listened in on most lessons and even taught some, especially Papa about mechanics. They asked she and Galen to give them “reports,” as Papa called them, about what they’d learned,or ideas they had and would help them with projects, like skinning a dead lizard, building a glider, a transmitter or a tree house.

Mama especially listened in on the Math and Science, often while she was working on data in the tower during Lesson times. Portia would occasionally even ask her opinion about examples to use.

One time Portia had been giving them a lesson about hyper-space corridors and fixed space folds. The pictures were beautiful but the subject was so incomprehensible that Kayly got a headache and Dora looked like she might cry.

"Jyn?" Portia had called in a loud deep voice...s _he often took the shape of a kindly bald older man for lessons_....."why are they not understanding this?"

Mama had shrugged, pulled off her boot, and then her blue wool sock. She showed how you could turn it inside out, then how if you shoved your hand in it fast with all your fingers spread you got stopped at the bottom of the sock, but when she pointed one finger, sliding in straight. It came right out through the hole at the toe. "That's Myreek's Principle kids!" Then she rolled up the sock into a ball and threw it at them, "And that's a Turan Stability Collapse."

"Ohhhhh..." Dora said. "I get it now."

Everybody giggled except for Portia who couldn't, and Mama went back to her work with one bare foot.

 _Bodhi Rook laughed so hard he'd had tears in his eyes when she told him that story_.

Papa had been the one who listened in most often on Lessons, like Planetary Geography, Languages, History and other things, at least while they were younger. Sometimes he interrupted Portia, and asked her to try to find things, others he just sat and watched with them.

The Rat, who never stopped asking questions when he was little.... _except while he was eating and sometimes not even then_....once asked both their parents if they had learned in Lessons about the Trade Guild Wars when they were little. Papa and Mama looked at each other without speaking for several minutes. "You want to take that one?" Mama finally asked. "No," Papa said.

He talked about "school" sometimes, and an Uncle Samuel who taught him to re-build machines. Mama said she'd never had any formal education at all until Papa taught her to dance.

"Who taught you about socks and hyper-space corridors then?" Galen had asked, at that same supper, and Mama actually stopped eating for a moment as if she were thinking very hard to remember.

"My Papa," she said. “He taught me about stars and my Mama taught me about rocks.”

_Galen Erso. Whose name the General had advised her, when she arrived, not to mention to anyone but herself or Bodhi._

 

 

After the first Interviews, in which the General had questioned her personally and at length, she had met her only occasionally.

 

 

Then, after several weeks, as Kaylyra had been standing at one of the wide temple entrances in the already oppressive heat, watching Dameron's Black Squadron X-wings being pulled out for a mission with the other flight trainees, the General appeared behind her.

 

"Recruit. Might I speak with you?" she said as if it were not an order.

The rest of her group moved out to follow the deck crew, without her. Several glanced back, looking concerned for her.

"G-o-o-d l-u-c-k," one, a blue haired girl from Naboo, mouthed.

 

Leia Organa gestured that she should walk with her, and they moved inside back toward the Command Center. The strange golden droid followed...  _silently for once...._  at a respectful distance.

 

"Kaylyra Andor.” the General said in a quiet voice, “ I knew your father, long ago. Did he ever tell you that?"

 _Papa?_  

"No Ma’am.”

The older woman nodded, then smiled,“I was in Intelligence, after a fashion. Cassian Andor was my, well, “handler” is the word but teacher was more like it.” She shook her head. “He taught me lessons I didn’t realize at the time, couldn’t credit until many years later….about the difference between absolute dedication and self-delusion, the difference between walking in the shadows and being in the dark….” she reached out and took Kayly’s arm, as if they were walking in a garden, not an echoing hanger full of people and machines. “I didn’t know him….at all really…. but I know what would have happened if he and your mother hadn’t had the courage to see and do what no one else would, unnumbered and unthanked. “ She looked up at Kayly and smiled again, this time rather sadly, “And then...now...to know that they survived, and were not broken by it, that they found new hope, and have done such remarkable things, I wish....”

They had reached the Communication Station area, and Organa sat on one of the mis-matched desk chairs, in front of an inactive console, pushing another chair over with her foot for Kayly.

Kayly sat. If General Leia Organa told you to sit, even with her foot, you should clearly sit but it all felt very odd.

_The General reminded her of Mama, in some ways,…Ava was right about that… and in other ways of Eldest Sister, blunt, practical, taking every opportunity to teach, to make sure that the young around her heard and saw what she was seeing, against a day she would not be here to see it for them. She also reminded Kaylyra very much of the Eldest Lady of Harbor Town, Perin, who was very old now ….that air of the game master about her, of seeing the whole board when you were playing Stones, as if she knew where all the black pebbles were and all the white and no move could truly surprise her, even if she lost……and of Portia._

“I would very much like to meet him again, your father.” she said, “we might have something to talk about...two very different old soldiers, who've survived against ridiculous odds. I’d also like to meet your mother for the first time. They must be so very proud of you and so very afraid for you.” The General sighed again then, and leaned forward, elbows braced against her knees, to look shrewdly up at Kayly. She really was remarkably short and she did not care.

“I need to do right now is figure out what use you can be to us, Kaylyra Andor….in this war that only we, and people like your parents, seem able to recognize for what it is. I have found a very old fox, who has quietly gone to ground and I want you and Commander Rook to take him a message. Let me explain...”

She looked around, "Damn it, we need some caf over here, there's supposed to be caf on that table by 06:00!"

One of the techs ran to get it, and the General laid out what she wanted Kayly to do.

  
Several hours later, Kaylyra Andor and Bodhi Rook took an unmarked ship into New Republic space to go visit General Davits Draven, ANR, retired.

Bodhi let her fly the U-wing on her own for more than half the journey.

 


	9. Legacies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old warriors and young gather for the Resistance. Kayly and her friends spend some time with Kes Dameron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Todo esta bien. Probablemente lo sorprendí. = Everything is fine. I probably surprised him.
> 
> Hola! Usted habla Festan? = Hello! You speak Festan?
> 
> “Sí, a veces, un poco, con mi padre = Yes, sometimes, a little, with my father
> 
> Una vez a la semana, chico= Once a week, boy

 

  
The fourth moon of Yavin had a civilian population. Most were clustered in the Settlement villages along the Southern Coast of the largest continent. At various times since the end of the Galactic Civil War there had been bursts of popularity for the place as a tourist destination, mostly of historical and educational interest. A number of lovely guesthouses and inns had been built. Also, Commander Dameron’s parents were also not the only retired soldiers who found themselves drawn back after the war. There were a number of retirement communities and small farms.

  
Command Flight Instructor Diree brought the trainees and recruits on a training flight to the Southern Fuel Depot after their first term testing was over. It had a large, well-lit and easy-to-land-on air strip and moving empty fuel containers was a useful, low-risk task for rookie pilots. “Babies” Commander Dameron called them all. Black Squadron had been downed on base for a few weeks, for reasons no one was allowed to talk about, so Dameron was actually doing some teaching, along with Commander Rook, and an awesome older human woman who had showed up on Resistance Base a few weeks before.

 

  
Commander Loren Joma was tough, steely-eyed and a terrific teacher if you didn’t mind being called “candy-ass” once in a while.

“She must be some kind of pilot goddess. Dameron looked like he might kneel at her feet and ask for her blessing the first time he saw her in the mess tent,” Snorri said. Everybody took a moment to appreciate the beauty of that image….or so it seemed to Kayly. _Ea knew she had._

 

Kaylyra had been with four others, running equipment-check drills on the teaching X-wing with Commander Rook, when a pale woman with straight grey-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail climbed out of a speeder and called loudly, “Where’s Rook?”

She had the kind of wrinkles around her eyes that lots of the older pilots had, that Rook had. As if she had looked forward between the stars for too many years, at least that’s how Paave described it.

Rook laid down the portable hand-reader he had been showing them how to use and turned around. A wide smile had crossed his face and he walked quickly out toward the speeder, wiping his hands on a rag from his pocket as he went.

“Bodhi Rook. Look at you,” the woman said, “with all your parts still attached.”

“Yes, ma,am, Thank you.” Rook said.

“We’re the same rank now, Rook,” the woman said, “You can start calling me Loren any time.” She hugged him then, awkwardly as if she were the sort of person who wasn’t used to such things.

“Well,” she said, looking around as if taking it all in, the reclaimed airstrip, the battered X-wings, the jungle, the small band of post-adolescent pilots in second-hand flight suits. “This sucks, doesn’t it?”

 

  
“Is she his mother?” Ava had asked, after Bodhi Rook had introduced them all to Commander Joma, back at the Base. Relationships between humans still confused the hell out of her. She stubbornly persisted in thinking all mature females on the base must be the mother of someone in their immediate vicinity.

“Only in a metaphorical sense,” Dameron said, having overheard her, as he passed by. “She was the lone pilot from Blue Squadron who got onto and off of Scarif before the base was destroyed, and saved the only four Rebels who walked away from the ground assault, one of whom was Commander Rook. She did it by flying blind out of the firestorm in a stolen Imperial shuttle with one bad engine. Add to that flying as a lead command at the evacuation of Hoth, the Battle of Endor, the Marel Assault and the Battle of Jakku…..and that’s just that I know of. She flew with Merrick, Dorn and Antilles and Skywalker. She’s a legend.”

“Oh my,” said Ava, “Why isn’t she a General like your mother?”

Dameron stared. He held himself very still in the way that people do when they are confused or surprised by a sudden rush of memory, but recovered swiftly “Ava, General Organa is not my mother,” he said, “My mother’s name was Shara Bey. She died when I was a boy.”

 _Good recovery. He’s a crack combat pilot,_ Kayly told herself, _quick mental reflexes are what it’s all about._

Not quick enough for Ava to miss, though. She was instantly aware and reached out to grasp Dameron’s hand in Regret for Causing Unintended Distress.

 

  
They had taken training flights before, and all of them were now G4 cleared. Since Dameron was there and willing to log some trainer hours in order to earn a few days to visit his father, it was decided to combine this training cargo flight with a 48 hour R&R. Bodhi even managed to sneak Paave and Ava onto his shuttle, so anxious was Pavy to see the oceans.

 

Kayly took the fat-bellied fuel shuttle up solo, empty, and maneuvered it into formation with the other six.

 

"Whoohoo!" Polly Norven said, over the comm. _"_ I just managed to sync up with Andor without knocking any essential parts off the boat _."_

"Don't jinx it." Kayly said.

“Nice Polly,” that was Bod, ”Almost couldn’t tell you were counting ascent numbers on your fingers.”

"Rookies, remember your comms are open, we CAN hear you" said Commander Diree.

"It's fun to barrel roll these things when they're empty Di. Make sure they all know to check that the service droids are locked down tight."

"Commander Dameron, please do not encourage my trainees to roll the tankers on their first run."

“Oh shit, was my comm on? Sorry.” Laughter broke out from every ship.

 

A readout appeared on Kayly’s monitor from T-17, the little droid unit tucked in the the back to handle the tank rotation and pressure.

<magnetic attachment @ 40.00///query: increase to max.???>

“No, small partner,” she said, “Don’t listen to him. I promise I am not going to roll this thing.”

 

After they landed (no rolls, no crashes, no damage to the ships) and unloaded at Fuel Station 2, most of the crew went straight to a speeder-shuttle down to the good surfing beaches and party bars that were supposed to be a few clicks out on the barrier islands. Kayly climbed onto Bodhi’s shuttle to go down to a small coastal settlement called Ameda, with Ava and Pavy. It seemed that Bodhi knew Dameron’s father and had been waiting for months to get a chance to come down to visit.

“It’s a lot quieter down there,” Dameron said, clearly still worried about Ava and Pavy and how they were adjusting. “Just a quiet town. There’s some nice hostels on the shore and my dad still has a little orchard and girasol farm. How about I take you out there for drinks? He loves to meet the new recruits.”

It was a generous thing to do, made even more so when Kes Dameron, a big broad-shouldered man with close-cropped grey hair who towered over his son, insisted that they stay with him. He seemed glad to have the company. He lived alone in the pretty white wooden house with a couple of oblong droids who rolled on pivoting wheels, Kz31 and KK4, and an animal companion, a wolf-like spotted canine named Loco. Striding straight out onto the grassy field he had grabbed and hugged his son hard and long almost as soon as he got out of the shuttle. Kayly found she had to look away, the longing for her parents hurt like a physical thing.

Ava placed a hand on her back, inquiring.  

_Rat, Rat...please have gotten off that field please, please please be alive._

She shook the thought off, gave Ava her bravest smile and grabbed her rucksack.

 

“That’s his male extra parent, his Father, right?” Ava whispered to her as she shyly got out the back. When Kayly said yes, she sighed with evident relief.

 

It was a lovely visit. Mr. Kes Dameron made them giant alcoholic drinks with fruit in them and he and Bodhi Rook sat up late on the screened porch, laughing and talking and telling stories about people they had both known long ago. _Kayly had a sad feeling that most of the people in the stories were dead._ Dameron sat and listened to them, smiling, but very quiet.

Early in the morning, Kayly woke first in the room she and her friends shared and tiptoed out only to find Mr. Kes Dameron already up and and making caff. When she came to the kitchen door, the big canine got up from the floor, ran over to her and made a sharp noise, “¡Loco! Deja de ladrar! Sé amable con nuestro invitado!” The man said and the animal stopped at once and went back to lie on the floor by the cooker, waving its tail and watching her with bright, not un-friendly eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Dameron said, “He’s only saying hello, but he forgets his manners sometimes. We don’t have many guests.”

“Todo esta bien. Probablemente lo sorprendí.”

The older man smiled broadly, “¡Hola! Usted habla Festan?”

“Sí, a veces, un poco, con mi padre.” Mr. Dameron laughed and then began saying a lot of things about, growing up elsewhere and never getting to speak “el viejo idioma" anymore except when Poe came to visit, and possibly about breakfast foods. Kayly had to admit then that “un poco” really did mean “un poco” in this instance since he spoke so differently than Papa and Portia, or at least in a different accent.

“Oh!” he said, laughing, “I know, too much slang. Don’t be embarrassed, Shara used to tease me about it. Where we lived on Sullest, up in the hills, even people ten kilometers away couldn’t understand us. “de tu padre?” you said niña? Where is your father from?”

 _Careful, Kaylyra,_ she thought.

“Fest. At least, he was born there, I know.”

“Ah!” Mr Dameron said, “Miners, eh? I thought I recognized the accent. Tough people out there. Hard to kill, from what I heard, and Force knows everybody from the Old Republic to the Empire tried..”

  
Commander Dameron came downstairs then and the canine started yelping wildly.

 

 

The three of them walked the couple of kilometers down to the shore that morning. It was a lovely day. The sand was yellowish white and the sky was bright blue. The ocean was grey and green and looked like a perfectly normal ocean. Except for the slight too-largeness of the sun, it might, might have seemed home-like.

Paave was deeply affected. While Ava collected shells, he walked down to the water’s edge and stood for several minutes before he stripped off the new boots they’d given him and walked in barefoot. He stood for a while, letting the surf wash over his feet and the long curving design picture of anchor rope that wound around his ankles, all the way up to his knees. He dipped a hand in the water and touched some of it to his tongue. Kaylyra could see then that he was crying, so she went out to him and put her arms around him.

“It’s so terribly different, but it’s the same,” he said, “All the old stories told about darkness and fire. They never said there were oceans out here too.”

“You’ll never be alone, Pavy” Kayly said, trying to put Ava’s bright certainty in her voice. “We’re Heart Companions now, always forever. We’ll find a way home, all of us, and your father will be there and Ava’s and my family will be yours too now.”

Paave laughed a little then, “That’s alright, I suppose. I like Galen when he’s not being a dick.”

“Kayly,” he said, “I like these people….I think…..I think they are fighting the true fight, but….my father, your parents…we have to find a way to get word home. We need to know what’s happening there. It’s killing me.”

“I’m working on it,” Kaylyra told him. “Bodhi Rook and I have a plan.”

 

 

They walked back to the Dameron hacienda to find Bodhi Rook sitting on the porch alone, reading. Commander Dameron and his father had gone into town to do some errands. They drank cold tea and sat to talk.

 

“These people who live here,” Ava asked, “Does the Resistance put them in danger? If the Enemy comes, they will die too, won’t they?”

“This is New Republic space now. The Deathstar is gone,” Bodhi said, Kaylyra shivered even in the warm breeze, “But the Resistance knows that if the First Order had the means to build one they’d do it again in a heartbeat. The people here understand the risk. When General Organa came here, I’m told that a planet-wide meeting was held. Everybody voted. She said that the Resistance wanted to base on Yavin IV because of what it symbolized. Every Citizen of the New Republic would hear the name and know exactly what they stood for, but they could and would choose another place rather than force the people of Yavin into danger unwilling. Most of the people here are veterans, or the children of veterans. She’s the last Princess of Alderaan, so she knew what she was asking. I’m told the vote was unanimous. Everybody here is in the Resistance now, whether they fight or farm girasol.”

“Ancient Portia admires her,” Ava said.

 

 

  
That “night”…. _not that it ever got super dark on Yavin IV_ ….Commander Dameron and Paave cleared the table and she volunteered to help Mr. Dameron wash dishes after he cooked them a huge meal.

 

As they washed and dried at the small sink the older man said, “I thought you looked familiar to me when Poe introduced us. I think I know why now.” He wiped a big wine glass with a sponge cloth and handed it to her to put on the shelf.

“I was on the ground at Endor. At one point it was classified, but I suppose that’s all over now. Anyway, we met up with a SpecOps ground operative before we got to our target. Tiny little sergeant named Hallick, had a jacket full of explosives and a gleam in her eye about using them. Was never quite clear about how she got on the ground ahead of us, but it wasn’t my place to ask and Stordie Tonc vouched for her loud and clear. Anyway, she got us in, it all happened and somehow she took some shrapnel. I think Berman said she took out a small tank with a grenade. Anyway, I had to carry her and Rook showed up to fly us out. Things were nuts at Endor, which they probably don’t put in the history vids, but I went to check on her at the field hospital before the bug-out and met her husband. I remember because I was waiting for my wife.” He pointed a finger at the ceiling and waived it in circles, ‘flying around’ he clearly meant. _Someone had told her that Commander Dameron’s mother had been a fighter pilot_.

Kayly said nothing, she just kept wiping the damp plates and stacking them on the counter.

“Quiet guy," Mr. Dameron went on, "a Captain, Arian was the name he gave, just sitting there by her cot. He spoke Festan to me and we had a conversation, almost exactly like the one you and I had this morning, about my backcountry accent, had that Festan mine-worker slide on his r’s like you do. Nice guy. Super worried about his wife. I remember because you didn’t see it that often, people being married in the midst of the shit. Everybody put it off,... “until it’s over” they said,... put their happiness on hold for fear of losing it, put off their whole lives some of them. Shara wouldn’t let me do that. “I won’t wait for what I want,” she said, “If they want to take things away from me they’re going to have to show up and do it in person, I won’t do it for them.”

He put his big hands on the edge of the counter then, as if fighting back tears for a moment.

Kayly dropped her drying cloth and laid a hand on his arm.

“Pop?” Dameron was standing in the doorway, “¿Estas bien?”

“Si, yeah..” he coughed and then laughed, patting Kayly’s hand and then scooping up the towel she’d dropped and handing it back to her.

“So,” he turned to look at his son in the doorway,”Kaylyra Andor, eh? Poe, did you know this young lady is the daughter of Captain Cassian Andor and…Jyn Erso, right?”

“Yeah, Pop,” Commander Dameron said, looking not like a dashing pilot or a dttermined officer, but like someone’s son.“ I knew.”

“Oh boy,” Mr. Dameron said with a laugh, “Who was the guy who said “Past never dies, it doesn’t even really pass”? I’m gonna kill Rook. All these years he knew I fought with Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor and he never told me.”

He squeezed Kayly’s hand, “Your folks, they stayed together? They got some time? Where are they now?”

  
She told him what they had decided they would tell people. He clearly knew it was edited but didn’t care.

 

The next day they had to pack back up and go back to base. Everybody hugged. Mr. Dameron hugged her so hard she thought of polar bears. He kissed Commander Dameron on the forehead like he was six. Galen would have been embarrassed as hell but Dameron wasn’t.

“Una vez a la semana, chico,” he said. “Set the droid up to do it if you’re someplace tricky.”

 

Dameron insisted she take the shuttle controls to get them back to the fuel station.

  
“Gotta learn to fly everything, kid,” he said, “If you can get your ass on a seat and your hands on the controls, just go with it.”

That sounded like the most dangerous advice she’d ever heard, but she didn’t say so.

 

‘Yes sir,” she said.

 

“Look,” he said, “There aren’t going to be too many times it’ll come up, but.....mulling it over..... I realized that I'm not ever going to be one of your regular flight instructors because I’m out again in a few days, and we might need to file some paperwork with somebody about it, but if we’re off-duty and in a non-command situation, you could probably get away with just calling me Poe.”

“How often is that going to happen?” she asked.

He sighed, “Probably almost never.”

“Well, Poe,” she said, “It’s something to think about.”

He laughed very hard then.

_Oh fuck, Paave will probably be a little heart-broken, but I might have to risk it._

 

As it was, nothing came of it then. She didn’t see him again for a long time. She rejoined her squad and flew the now-full tanker back to the Base. Black Squadron shipped out the next day and her first priority remained finding a way to get word back to Ea.


	10. Those Who Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snippets of life on Resistance Base on Yavin 4
> 
> Kaylyra Andor remembers when the war became a part of her life, and her parent's sadness and determination. 
> 
> She learns that she may be just a shade more ready for this fight than others.
> 
> Other soldiers also remember their fallen heroes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bits.

  
The first day of combat training was pretty tough for most of the recruits.

“Why do we have to do this?” Polly said, standing nervously in grey athletic clothes. “I have arms like a Tooka kitten. My only survival strategies are ‘Stay with the ship” and ‘shoot a gun.”

She was joking of course, trying to make light because she was nervous but Kayly found herself sounding far harsher than she meant to as she said, “Because the Remnant and First Order won’t give you that choice.”

 

 

 

 

Mama was the one who taught them to shoot. There were a couple of rehabbed blasters in a wooden box in the shed loft and they were never charged until Mama was there to charge them. Kayly first and then Galen shot cracked jars and green apples off the stone wall at the back pasture on the lowest possible power setting. They were both pretty good at it. The only other kids who got shooting lessons were Scavengers kids…..largely because they were the only other ones whose parents had guns.

Sometimes there were even contests at some of the Salvage Fairs. The Rat had wanted to compete at the youth distance shooting contest the year he was eight because the prize was a custom-made blue leather belt or boots, but also because he knew he was a way better shot than the kid who won last year.

 

Mama said “Maybe” but Papa had said “No” and even though he said it quietly, while he was working on cutting the casing on a sensor pole in the back work shed, there was something about the way he said it, the way he took his welding goggles off, and wiped them with a rag and said,“No, Galen.”

_You did not argue with Papa when he used his quiet voice._

 

Later, at that Fair she had gone down to watch the shooting contests, _not because she cared but because she knew exactly what the little runt-sneak was going to do._ Sure enough, he and his pal Kemmi were down by the line. He threw her a dirty look when he saw her.

“We’re just watching,” he said, and maybe that was even sort of true but he was sure as hell also thinking about borrowing one of Kemmi’s Mom’s guns and shooting in that contest.

“Great,” she said, “You just keep watching then, Rat, so I can stand here and finish eating this cake and not have to go all the way over to Dov’s,” where Mama and Papa were, “and fink you out.”

“I hate you!” he’d yelled and kicked dirt on her new cloth shoes like some kind of tantruming baby Taun.

“I hate you too you little shit,” she’d said

 

 

_You could shoot targets and you could shoot blues if they charged and you could shoot hill snakes but only if they were the orange kind and moving toward you. You touched a gun or even thought about touching a gun without telling Mama what you were doing and she would whup your ass. No question._

 

That’s the way things were until that Fall when she was twelve, after the Stormtroopers showed up at the Green River Market.

Nine of them, the white kind and the silver.

She found out later it was a freak thing, ten thousand to one, a ship that had come down because it actually hit some kind of debris in hyperspace and crashed hard in the ocean. The Bequa found it later and it was totally wrecked but some of them must have gotten out in an escape pod that somehow came right through one of Portia’s rare blind spots. It had floated for days, looking like debris to even Portia’s eyes until getting towed in by some greedy Raiders who opened it up and found way more than they bargained for inside.

They’d killed the unlucky Raiders, stolen their gliders and must have headed for the first place their limited sensors detected a very faint energy signature, Green River, according to the one surviving prisoner who’d talked pretty quick, hoping to get a signal back to their base, …. _.probably the big pump people’d put together out of salvage parts at Green River to desalinate water… shielded it better after_ …. They’d killed two people on the edge of town, walked right into the Marketplace and started taking hostages. Portia’s alarms had gone off and in the confusion Papa had slipped up to the bell tower like a shadow and taken out five with a rifle hidden there. Mama took out three on the ground with an iron bar and a blaster she scooped from the ground. Ava’s grandmother literally bit ones hand off.

 

 

That was how she learned that every large settlement from “the Ice to the Islands” had a high spot with a hidden rifle in it for people who knew how…. like Papa or Conn or Mara up at Timberline Village….to go and set up a defensive perimeter. All her life she’d seen things and not know what she was seeing. The work that Mama and Papa did with Portia, the way Nexa and every other village and town always had practice drills of some kind, a meeting place, shelters, in case of wildfires, or floods or in case of enemies. The signal towers for the torchlights that could pass a message from the Islands to the North without using power. All of it.

 

 

“Where is the rifle at Nexa, do you think? The high place to set up the perimeter?” Galen had whispered to Kayly, as they’d slept for a night with the other youngsters and old elders at in the shelter at Green River, waiting for Mama and Papa to return for them, and after Ava’s Grandmother had explained to them what Papa had been doing up in the bell tower.

He’d answered the question himself before she could, “Portia,” he said, “It’s gotta be Portia.”

_Their home, their Ea, was on the edge of a dangerous frontier, and they were all soldiers in its defense at the same time they were being Farmers or Fishers or Scavengers._

 

It was after that Fall that Papa and Conn and Dov began to build the test-ship and Papa started making sure that some of them could learn how to fly Guardian. The signal system was set up and expanded.

Mama had already taught them how to fight, now she taught them, and some of the kids from HarborTown and the River how to fight people in armor.

Papa took her and Nikki out several weeks later on a clear winter day, up to the high hill behind the field, and laid two rifles wrapped in oiled leather out on the grass. One was a sparkling one, not rehabbed… _’whole’ was the word people used_ ,…and one a battered patched-together regular one like she had seen most other people, like Dov and Dora’s mom Toma, use.

“You’ll need to learn how to use both, and how to clean and re-assemble both,” Papa said. “let’s get started.”

When she had done things wrong, like not accounted for recoil and made herself stumble he said,”Again.” When she did things correctly, like get the shiny one back together, to green charge and at her shoulder in correct position before the small square timer peeped, he said, “Right.” He never smiled.

When they came back in home as the small winter moon was setting along with the sun, Mama had been waiting outside the house, sitting on the wall. As she went inside with Nikki, who was staying over, she could smell something delicious and there was hot soup in the pot by the fireplace. Bes must have brought it because Mama did not make soup. Papa stayed outside though, to put away the rifles in a black plas box hiding place near the stone garden wall. When neither of them came back in, Kayly peered out the window carefully. They were still out in the near dark by the wall and Mama had her arms around him. Papa’s head was on her shoulder and Mama was saying something she couldn’t clearly hear. All Kayly could make out was “Estoy aquí.,,,te amo..” over and over it seemed. If Papa was saying anything she couldn’t make it out. She felt so awful. As if she'd done something wrong, even though she knew she hadn't. She closed the curtain and Mama and Papa came back inside to eat soon after. Within an hour or two, things had seemed almost normal, they popped some seed in a pan in the fireplace and played knucklebones, all five of them. Mama won.

_Galen started far-shooting lessons two years later, and Kayly still remembered how annoyed she’d been when she realized that, although she was very good, he was better._

 

 

 

 

  
The teacher was a tall Chandrillian martial-arts guy named Lieutenant Ronna. “Okay recruits,” he said, “first thing you’re going to need to learn how to do is fall. Who’d like to take the first charge at me and I’ll show you how that’s going to work.”

Kayly didn’t volunteer right away. She wanted to see how the guy moved first….also, she knew the downside of coming off as a smart ass the first time you walked into a situation.

 _He was top heavy, long-legged, well-balanced, but favoring his right and probably not compensating adequately at the moment because he didn’t see them as any danger at all, still, he was strong, quick and very good at his job, she didn't doubt. He’d only underestimate her once._ This could turn out badly if he was the sort of person who took the unexpected as a challenge to his authority. _Only one way to find out though._ She volunteered to go fourth.

She knocked him on his ass the first time, to a draw the second and got made teaching assistant the next day.

Kayly didn’t need them to teach her how to be a soldier, she knew what she fought for and she knew what she fought against. She was the Blackbird’s daughter. What she needed was for them to trust her enough and listen to her. She needed a ship and a way to talk safely to home.

 

 

 

 

Ava had started working with the Quartermaster, a Bothan named Jenny, because if there was one thing Ava could do it was organize other people’s stuff. Paave had had a harder time, until one day he had noticed the crews that seemed to work endlessly keeping the runways clear of creeping vine and burrowing animals, yet also concealed with enough vegetation on the rolling covers to hide them from unfriendly eyes. He joined that work detail. Sometimes he still had to work with droids, but he didn’t have to touch them and he could be outside. The heat bothered him not at all, so he’d work until he was tired, and that helped him sleep better. When they were both working and Kayly had down time, and when it was just too damned hot, she would sometimes go back on her own into the cool storage areas. She would find the pillar with the names, Rogue One, the dead of Scarif, Papa and Mama, and just sit there sometimes.

 

She had noticed that occasionally there would be wheel tracks around the area, even though it was mostly storage. She also noticed that some times the little messenger units, basically little boxes on wheels that carried small equipment/tools/power pacs from one end of the base to the other, would be sitting there powered down, but would come on quick and scoot away when she approached.

*hihihihihi*

“Hi,” she would say, but they never answered.

 

Once, after Combat Training, Kayly went back and sat in the cool darkness by the pillar. She ran her fingers over the carved names, all of them, and sat with her back against the storage units, eyes closed, breathing slowly, six in and eight out.

 

 

After what seemed like a long time, she opened her eyes to find that several little droids had gathered, three messenger units and two small R4s. The General’s person-sized C3 was there as well. They seemed to be looking at the pillar, although since only the C3 had directional gaze it was hard to tell.

“Miss Kaylyra Andor,” the C3 said, in it’s high-pitched accent. _Someone had told her it always used an urban Corscanti accent which seemed weirdly specific._

“I apologize for waking you. These units wanted to come and see these markings. All of you, shoo! Go away now! Shoo!”

It walked in a circle, waving its stiff arms jerkily, and the smaller droids moved back a few meters.

“No,” she said, “I wasn’t asleep, “…. _maybe she had been, but only barely…_.

 

She had learned enough binary to understand what the R4’s were beeping, as they scattered away.

**wanted to see…wanted to see**

The little messenger ‘mice’ just chipped *hihihihihi* the way they always did

“I’m sorry,” she said, getting stiffly to her feet, “You don’t have to go. What…” they had all rolled away, except for one R4, who stopped about 10 meters away and turned its head back around, “What did you want to see?”

The golden C3 stayed where it was. It tilted its ‘head’ sideways, as if curious, but since its eyes were just coin-sized reflectors and its ‘mouth’ just a small square audio speaker, trying to read expression into its movements just left you feeling confused and awkward. It said nothing.

The R4,…. _she didn’t know the rest of its name_ …. tipped and turned its dome top around and back.

*name* it said.

 

“Oh you!” the C3 scolded, flapping its hands again, “enough of your nonsense, get back to work now! You saw it yesterday! I told you you did! You always forget, you’re as bad as those T3-9s and they only have 12 hours of memory storage! Shoo I say!” It tottered back around on its stiff legs and seemed to bow to her, “I am very sorry Miss Kaylyra, pay no attention to them, please excuse us.” It began to hurry away, metal feet scrabbling on the stone, arms waving as always, chattering to itself annoyingly.

 

 _Bodhi said it was already here when he came back_.

 

_K2. They came to see K2’s name._

 

“C3-P0,” Kaylyra said, “Who carved K2-S0’s name on this stone?”

The golden droid stopped.

 

Very slowly it shuffled its feet to turn toward her again with those blank yellow disc-eyes.

“This is an protected archeological site, Miss Kaylyra and the initiation of purposeful damage without express instruction or permission would not…”

“But people had already damaged this side,” she said, “So if all these names were already carved by people that might be tacit permission, right?” She asked, “I mean any modification…” _she tried to talk as Portia would_ , “…say, a single name…would be almost insignificant by that light.”

 Silence.

“Did he suffer?” C3-P0 asked.

 _Probably,_ she thought.

 

“I don’t know that,” Kayly said. “I only know that K2-S0 was my father’s best friend. I know he died in the data tower on Scarif, helping my parents, sacrificing himself to buy them time to send the message. I know he was brave and stubborn and somehow he set up a shuttle to get them to safety when they were hurt, almost dying Second Sister says. Nobody knows now how he did that but he did. My mother named me for him, and my brother and I are alive because of him. His name is one of the ones in her garden. He is…the name my people use is “Heart Companion”…he’s a hero to us and part of us forever.”

The droid was silent for several minutes. 

_if there was one thing she knew about this particular machine-person, it was that it was never silent._

 

“How extraordinary,” C3-P0 said, “Thank you Miss Kaylyra Andor. The place where you are from must be quite remarkable.”

He shuffled away after that, and the small droids scooted off in other directions.

 

Kayly went back to her training station because her shift was about to begin. As before, she saw golden droid around often, but it never spoke to Kayly again about their conversation at the pillar carved with the names of the dead heroes of Scarif.

Six weeks later Bodhi came to her and they presented their proposal to General Organa.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our girl works to get home.


	11. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bodhi Rook reflects on his life between Endor and joining the Resistance, and comes to Kaylyra with a proposal.

  
Commander Bodhi Rook had lived a life, in the days after the Armistice, after Jakku, although for a while he had wandered.

 

 

The last months of the War had been a hellish blur. Serving in the Alliance Transport Corps, at the rank of Flight Commander by the end, he had spent much of that last year moving people into combat theatre and out again.

The last time he saw Stordan Tonc it had been on the first drop onto Jakku, corkscrewing down under lunatic fire toward blank ground so whipped by magnetic sandstorms as to be blind, instruments-only-practically-psychic flying. It could have been his imagination but even the computer read-out had sounded scared…. _could you read terror into the placement of zeros and ones on an optical scan?_

“I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.”

He hadn’t been the one to say it, that had been Tonc. He’d slapped Bodhi on the back, shouting over the scream of wind as the back bay door opened and his team had started out, “That’s what the man said, right?”

“Yeah,” Bodhi almost yelled, eyes on the instruments, unable too do more than reach a hand back to squeeze his friends forearm, “That’s how it went.”

“Damn fucking right, brother.” Stordan Tonc had said, “And the fucking Force is fucking lucky for the ride. See you on the other side.”

 

Then he was gone. Bodhi caught a glimpse on the rear vid, of him tapping his crew for the jump. They were a ten Pathfinder team, the best of the best.

“Go! Go! Go!” he’d heard Tonc’s voice sending out one after the other, then he dropped himself out last, tapping his own chest with an index finger before he jumped, almost in prayer, Rogue One.

Bodhi hadn’t had a hand free to make the sign, but he’d mouthed the words. He wished afterwards that he could have claimed to have had some premonition, some inner sense that this was goodbye, but he hadn’t.

“Goodbye brother,” he should have said, but he was working. He had to fly.

 

Slices of scan data about the ground placements here had come in from “deep surveillance”..… _People probably thought he and Tonc were nuts because they smiled at each other across briefing tables when stuff like that came in. He smiled, at least. Tonc tended to laugh out loud and once actually chuckled “Hell yeah, folks! ‘power couple’ don’t even half cover it!” It was a miracle Draven and Cracken hadn’t had him shot as a Security risk_ …. It was tunnels and deep underground fighting down there, they were told, nasty with Imperial Remnant honey-combed in doing Force-only-knew-what dark-ass shit.

These were not going to be Imperial troops the like of which anyone had ever seen before, Admiral Ackbar had warned them. Nothing was left now but the religious fanatics. There would be no logic, no terms of surrender, probably no prisoners. The Imperial Remnant that had regrouped at Jakku were a suicide cult, called “The Contingency” and babbling about about the “Eternal Dark” and the “Undying Emperor.” In addition to setting up a massive stand-off at Jakku, it was revealed at the last instant that they had positioned conventional but massive laser cannon, controlled from within the planet but imbedded in a dozen sleeper satellites, throughout the Core Worlds. Alliance Forces had received information about the satellites but assumed them to be anti-ship placements designed to attack the Fleet until almost too late. It was only when Draven and Intelligence had received a blast message just prior to the coordinated attack on the planet's surface.

“They do not strike to win. They strike to kill. Revenge. Suicide. ”  
_Who did that sound like? Hello Portia._

 

Rogue, Phantom and Green Squadrons had taken out all of the off planet weapons arrays, it turned out they had not ever been aimed at the Fleet. Each one had been targeting a Core World capitol city. Then the fighters came screaming back to gateways over Jakku for the “final” showdown.

A sky battle for the ages was fought over the skies above Jakku. A ring of Imperial Destroyers had circled the planet and when the fighters finally cracked it, it was at a cost that would stagger him later when he heard the casualty numbers. His comm had been screaming at the time. Burning destroyers were literally falling from the sky, but all that would have meant nothing if those bastards under the ground had been able to detonate. “Deep surveillance” had also sent word that the planets core itself had been booby-trapped.

He was a pilot. He dropped teams in, blind, and flew back up for more from the troop ships, between falling debris and cannon fire for hours. Finally it seemed to stop, people were saying things over the comms, but he honestly had only listened when they told him to go down and start extracting teams. Then he kept on doing that until the bio-read on the ships computer overrode his command and made him stop, assessing him as physically unsafe to fly anymore.

 

Tonc had been dead for almost two days before he got the confirmation. General Draven had come to find him at the field command Flight Platform personally. As soon as Rook saw the tall man with thinning red hair standing by the docking lane, he’d known. Spec Ops Commander Stordan Tonc and his whole team had been lost in the attack that shut down the core detonation chamber.

 

_Numb had not been the right word. He could feel the pain but it wrapped around him then like sound in an echo chamber, pervasive but so diffuse he couldn’t identify the direction it was coming from._

“Someone has to let them know,” he heard himself saying to Draven, but the General had only nodded.

“I already have,” he said.

Bodhi had turned away then, and walked back to his shuttle. They were still moving wounded up to the hospital ships.

He would not see General Draven again in person for another 20 years.

 

 

He might have gone then. He thought about it, just getting in a ship and heading for the Modell Sector, past the Restricted Zone beyond Endor. He probably would have been able to make it. He still had the ear cuff, wore it pretty much all the time then for fear of losing it otherwise. If he could just get close, close enough to hear Portia, to speak to her, she could bring him in.

 _Would he still hear her speak in Galen Erso’s voice,_ he wondered, _or had he changed too much for that?_

 

He put in for the discharge paperwork, but left the submission unsent for several weeks as his unit continued to work, moving equipment now.

Admiral Ackbar hailed him as he docked on a Mon Calmari flagship bringing in transport rigs.

The Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the newly victorious Alliance to Restore the Republic had actually walked right into the shuttle cockpit and sat down in the co-pilot’s seat while Bodhi’s crew unloaded.

He waved Bodhi away when he tried to salute, and they sat in silence for a long while.

“You would be a hero, if you came to us,” the Admiral said finally, flexing his large long fingers over the flight controls, as if by habit. He meant Mon Cala, Bodhi knew.

“I don’t think I could stand that, sir,” Rook said, and the Ackbar nodded as if he understood.

“I learned of Commander Tonc’s passing,” he said and tapped his hand upon the arm of his flight suit. For the first time Bodhi saw the yellow ribbon pinned there. It was the Mon Cala color of mourning.

“The others though, are they safe?” he asked.

 _I hope so,_ Bodhi thought, _but where is safe? I don’t even know the limits of my own galaxy anymore._

 

“They are together,” Bodhi said, “It is all they ever asked for.”

The Admiral nodded again, and made a sound that might have been a sigh. “Did he have family, Stordan Tonc?”

“Yes, a sister.”

 

_Tonc had started sending inquiries back to Qemia 7 not long after Endor, he knew. There had been riots there, chaos. Months ago when he had finally gotten through to a great-aunt, Tonc had been furious, Bodhi remembered._

_So many people were looking for people on hundreds of worlds cut off in turmoil, or still fighting, that there had had to be rationing. Everyone was getting a certain amount of time credits to do holo and net-searches in between mission assignments. “I don’t need mine, Bodhi said, “You do, take them.” Tonc had hugged him hard with tears in his eyes and headed to the Data Terminals whenever he got the chance._

_“Damn! Damn!” Tonc had slammed a headset down as the time at the conference facility ended and a holo of an older woman, straight-backed and white-haired, had vanished. “She’s dead to us'…that’s what she said…Damn! Damn! I love my Auntie Sennie,” Tonc, said, punching the console, “I know….I know it must have been awful for her, I know she thinks….but, she doesn’t get to decide that for me…Ellena’s my sister, man….I NEED to know where she is.”_

 

“I don’t know where she is now, she got lost in the confusion on Qemia 7.”

“Then we will find her,” Ackbar said. “The Mon Calmari do not leave debts unpaid.”

 

He sent the submission of Request for Decommission. Messages came from Command to his private account, at least one of them had a indicator that identified it as from Leia Organa, but he never opened any of them. The Admiral arranged a Reserve transfer to his staff and Bodhi spent the next few months paying back the only debt it was in his power to pay.

 

It was by mere chance that he had wandered into the meeting at the Veterans Health Network.

His hand had started acting up… _.not the whole hand, just the thumb, he was having trouble bending the bloody thing_ ….and annoyed with a droid at the registration... _he had been having some trouble with a short temper at that point._... he started swearing a Jedhan blue streak, totally lost it for no good reason.

 _Really, his mother would have washed his mouth out with soap._  

Taking himself out into the hallway to try to get a bloody grip, he had seen a slim young man also in an Alliance jacket with the unit patches carefully removed, standing there watching him.

“I’m sorry,” Bodhi said, shaky and profoundly embarrassed.

“NiJedha?” the man asked, gently.

 

His name was Remmi Nemir and he took Bodhi to a room where a handful of other men and women were sitting around a folding table with a red tablecloth. There was very bad caf and a small plate of tiny homemade Jedhan pastries. It was the beginning of what later became the AARR Combat Veterans chapter of the Jedhan Survivors Network.

 

Bodhi Rook found himself telling the people there about Chirrut and Baze and some of them cried. He told them about the dreams he still had of the Temple and found that he was not the only person who had dreams like that.

 

He stayed on Hosnian Prime and worked with the Network for three years before Remmi asked him to come with him to Takodana.

He was an architect by training, and had been asked to build a small vocational school there on the grounds of the Jedha Diaspora Cultural Center.

“Why?” Bodhi had asked. “What would I do there?”

“Teach mechanics. You build ship engines for fun in your apartment.”

“Just because I’ve been kicked out of three apartments in two years,” Bodhi pointed out, “doesn’t mean I’m qualified to teach. It just means I’m compulsive,”

“Then come because I love you,” Remmi said, and kissed his hand.

 

  
That night, while Remmi slept, he looked up current celestial positioning charts, though none of them were ever as beautiful as the ones Portia had produced inside the walls of her tower and he saw the red lines. Huge areas of the Modell System were marked as dangerous to FTL travel. The Imperial Remnant still held half a dozen Core Worlds. He tried to listen to his heart.

  
_My sister, my brother,_ he thought. _Are you still alive? Are you safe? Are you happy? Will I put you at greater risk now trying to find you?_

The next day he gave Remmi his answer.

They went to Takodana and had ten good, wonderful years. Remmi built them a small house on the edge of the Center grounds. He won an architectural award for the school but his true pride and joy was the small Kyber shrine that he designed, around a finger-sized crystal that was recovered by a New Republic team from the ruins of Eadu.

 _Galen,_ Bodhi thought, _should I be thanking you or asking your forgiveness?_

 

In the end it was Remmi who became restless, homesick.

On their eleventh anniversary he came to Bodhi on their small patio, with tears in his eyes. Within the Foundation, since the earliest years there had always been a faction who spoke of returning to Jedha, of rebuilding a new city there as a sacred heritage site. Funds had been raised for terraforming support and a first round seismic studies had finally been completed declaring it safe to at least begin laying foundations. There was no doubt but that it would be the work of a lifetime, probably many lifetimes, but it was Remmi’s dream.

“We can go home, Bodhi, please.”

“Oh my dear,” Bodhi Rook said, “Beautiful heart, you knew before you asked, didn’t you? That’s why you were crying.”

_I watched it fall. I saw the sky grow dark and the fire rain down and the earth rise up. For me there is no home on Jedha ever again._

 

He stayed in the house Remmi had built for him. He taught, he dreamed of the Temple and sometimes he went to Qemia 7 over term breaks to visit Tonc’s nephews, who called him “Uncle Rook.”

 

Then came the rumblings. The “Remnant” worlds had never formally surrendered. Scandals rocked the New Republican Senate. President Mon Mothma had retired, for health reasons, and no one else seemed able to rally the squabbling Mid-Rim worlds.

Bodhi cared little for politics and reception for news feeds was actually blocked, by design, on large portions of the Center’s grounds, but something, something began to pull at him. Maybe it was the snatch of a familiar Imperial March heard playing in the background of a News story about the pro-Imperial history being taught in “Neo-Imperial” schools on Borosk. Maybe it was the red “impassable” lines that began to spread across the galactic charts, like spiders into the Unknown Regions…..Modell, Endor.

 

Bodhi found the ear cuff, on his bedside table, in the box Remmi had carved for him out of the stump of an apple tree that had stood in the spot they put the first shovel in to build the house. He began to wear it again. There was no voice in his head, but he kept it on, waiting, ready. He wasn't sure for what.

 

News feeds were full of the story.

First Senator Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker, hero of the Battle of Yavin, decorated Flight Commander and Founder of the Neo-Jedi Academy were revealed to be brother and sister and the children of the dead Imperial criminal Lord Darth Vader.

Scandal boiled for months, Organa resigned her chairmanship, speaking movingly on the Senate Floor of how she had learned only as an adult of her heritage, of  finding only after Endor that the honored Senator Padme Amidala had been her natural mother and that the war criminal known as Lord Darth  Vader had once been a Jedi Knight named Skywalker. During the battle itself it was revealed to her how this former Master had gone mad and murdered Amidala, then nine months pregnant,  at the very commencement of the Purges. It was a horrible story. Amidala's friends had saved the posthumously delivered children from Palpatine's revenge and hidden them, concealing the truth from both of them and the Galaxy. 

Shame and shock had kept her silent, she said, and afterwards a desire to protect her brother and her son.

“All these years!” One of the teachers had said, horrified, “How could she have lied to us all for so long?”

Bodhi remembered seeing the gouge marks where Galen Erso’s name had been removed from the wall of the University Honors at Brentaal. People still threw handfuls of ash, and rotten fruit at the empty spot, even all these years after and the Engineering Department had finally had to tear the whole building down and rebuild to stop the protests.

_What would have happened to Jyn?_

 

“How could she have told the truth?” he said.

 

Organa retained only her Senate seat, and that barely.

Bodhi could not remember how he heard the name “First Order” but he remembered the first time he saw an image of soldiers in storm trooper white  in the back of a video alert about border conflicts on the Outer Rim.

 

He filed the paperwork to take early retirement from the school. He notified the administration that he would be donating his house as a residence for visiting scholars and he looked at the star charts.

_Where they still there? Could he find them? Maybe it was time._

Leia Organa petitioned the Senate to restore the military and move openly against the First Order. When they did not, she repeated Padme Amidala’s famous suppressed speech denouncing the Old Republic Senate for not acting against Palpatine’s installation onto the record, word for word, then she resigned and declared the Resistance.

Bodhi Rook set his affairs in order and flew a rental shuttle to Yavin 4….. _totally blew his credit rating on that lost deposit._

 

A few months later he was called to Resistance base command because someone had crashed a ship and they were looking for him. It was a very young woman with Jyn Erso’s clear eyes and Cassian Andor’s steady courage.

He still had family.

  
It took a lot of tinkering and some digging around to re-create something like the hardware Weems and Chewbacca had hacked together almost thirty years ago, but the best way to make something look like junk was to actually make it out of junk. He had made a voice that only one far-flung lighthouse might be able to hear.

  
He found Kaylyra Andor in the dining tent coming off her shift after logging her final flight hours on the trainer.

“I think I’ve found a way to call home, my dear,” he said, “but we need to talk to the Princess.”

 


	12. What is Saved and What is Parted With

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaylyra Andor's continuing experiences at Yavin Base, being part of and yet not part of the Resistance. Our girl learns to fly some X-wing. Admiral Ackbar shows up. There is no crying in space...not. Leia Organa wants some serious answers before she lets anybody use her phone to call home.

 

 

 

It would involve an off-base run to even set up Bodhi's equipment. Favors would need to be called in and an illegal one-time patch to go into seven different comm systems on seven unallied worlds, all for just for a single broadcast. Afterwards, if everything worked as they hoped, they would need a ship free and clear, and there was no guarantee that they would be able bring it back anytime soon or at all. Authorization could only come from the General, the “Mother” General as Ava called her in private. Leia Organa was the only one who could ok full-on bandwidth piracy and craziness, and she would ask a high price for her permission.

 

 

There were other channels of authority of course. General Organa was the de-facto leader of the Resistance and headed Strategic Command, but there were at least four other Generals on base at any given time now. A big human with a huge mane of white hair, Major Ematt, was in charge of Base Operations. Taslin was Communications and Satura was in charge of…..something.

 

 

One day when Kayly was out on the tarmac with Bodhi Rook a white speeder pulled up and an orange-red person in a slick grey pressure suit that covered them up entirely, except for a large bulbous head and long fingers, stepped out of it.

 

Bodhi had wheeled out an X-wing chassis from the repair bays, ostensibly so he could work on the landing frame, but mostly so Kayly could sit in the cockpit and run over gunnery controls for the 500th time. Seeing the speeder pull up, she cracked the cockpit hatch open just as Bodhi walked out from under the frame.

_She recognized the sort of person inside from her lessons with Portia. Mon Calmari._

 

“Bodhi Rook!” bellowed the person as the speeder stopped. The Mon Calmari was not driving, that was some poor stiff from the Transport pool, but they hadn't even entirely stopped the vehicle before he started climbing out. Kayly could see Bodhi smiling very wide.

 _It could only be him,_ she thought,  _Admiral Gail Ackbar, Supreme Commander of the Combined Fleet and Forces of the Alliance to Restore the Republic._

 

The Admiral's face was spotted a little with yellow and white, _which she knew denoted old age in the Mon Calmari_ , but he fairly jogged over to Bodhi on shortish legs.

Laughing in a rather echoing voice, he cried “My friend! My friend!” and grabbed Bodhi in a crushing hug, even though he was only as tall as the pilot’s shoulder, “My old and esteemed friend!”

“Sir.” Bodhi said, “I am so very glad to see you sir.”

 

Kayly had slipped off her helmet and laid it on the edge of the console. She was a little unsure of whether she should climb out or stay put, but the Admiral seemed to spot her at once, his large golden eyes rolling up toward the top of his head.

“This is her?” he said, “This is the child?”

Bodhi was nodding, and looked back at her with a smile, “Kaylyra,” he said, “Come down. The Admiral wants to talk to you.”

 _I wonder if he has a ship with him?_ Kayly thought, _Portia would flat out go giddy if I got to go aboard a Mon Calmari ship._

 

There had been a certain amount of fear that the Admiral would hug her too, not least because she had no idea how hard you were supposed to  hug someone in a pressure suit, but the General only rolled large eyes and reached out with his long thin six-fingered hands to hold hers. She thought they would feel like crab shell or something but it wasn't like that at all. His skin was smooth and strong with muscle. It reminded her of the times she had touched the backs of Bequa who came up to visit when Bill had taken her out in the boat at HarborTown.

 

“Oh,” he said, “This is marvelous, this is a light for us as evening darkens again.”

 

 

Most people in the Resistance her age were “victory kids," in the parlance of the older soldiers. It was what they called  those born after the Surrender and raised with no real memory of the Empire except from their parents stories, people like Commander Poe Dameron.

Kayly felt sometimes that she had more in common with the older people here, like Commander Joma and Bodhi and Mr. Kes Dameron.

To most people on Resistance Base she was just Kayly Andor and that name meant nothing. She, lPaave and Ava, were known to be recruits from some frontier world out “near the Model sector.” Most people had an general idea that this was at the edge of Imperial Remnant-controlled space where there had been First Order attacks for years that the Remnant had covered up and the New Republic had ignored.

Everyone "knew," so no one asked them for details, assuming they must all have some tragic back story....which maybe they had.

None of them talked about home to anyone except General Organa, Mr. Dameron and Bodhi.

_Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor had been killed at Scarif._

Operation Lighthouse had never existed.

 

 

But General Ackbar, already knew.

 

The old Admiral was supremely discreet. “Tell me no more than you will or you can, child,” he said as he held her hands and looked at her with his strange golden eyes, “But know that there is a place where none of your families sacrifices have been forgotten and that their names are spoken with honor to this day. For us the story of the heroes of Scarif has never been lost.”

 

Bodhi drove with him back to Command Center after a little while and Kayly saw the Admiral later at the main complex, walking with General Organa and Satura he did not speak to her again that day. She thought she saw him winking at her from across the hangar as she went in with her team to run fuel checks but it was so hard to tell since his eyes closed from the bottom.

 

 

Leia Organa had been a diplomat, warrior, and Intelligence operative …. _with Papa it seemed_ ….but she had never been a troop commander, at least from what Kayly had studied about the war. Now the great battle commander of the Galactic Civil War was here. _Did this mean they were ready to fight?_

Training schedules were ratcheting up. New X-wings were appearing and Bodhi was busy. 

 

 

 

 

When it was was time for final fighter trials. Kayly and others from her trainee squad went up for the first time in standard X-wing. They each had to calculate and make the jump to light speed alone.

 

 

 

 

 

***** Pilot Andor. Trainee 3. Green 3. Initiating Jump to light-speed on pilot Mark. Designate re-check coordinates AD1.73.KD6 Command Training coordinates on file. Affirm?******

  
_This is what I need to do to fight. This is the only way I’m ever making it home._

“Yes. 2B. Initiate Jump.”

*****Jump to light speed at Mark 3-2-1****

 

Everything went white and she listened to her heartbeat.

 

_Portia’s voice over the comms talking her through every step in the jump on instruments she hadn’t even known how to read.....she'd been so scared....and then silence._

 

 

 

 

“I hate FTL Corridor travel,” Bodhi had told her, as they were walking out to a training pad early on. “All pilots hate it. Anybody who tells you they don’t is a liar, a maniac or really really stupid.

“That’s not true,” Dameron had said, “Some people are adrenaline junkies. They love the jump.”

“Do you?” Kayly had asked, purely out of curiosity and in no way inquiring because she had any passing interest in finding out what sorts of things Commander Poe Dameron found inherently exciting.

“No,” he said, “I’m kind of a jump anti-adrenaline person. There’s a lot to be said about that thrill you get when you are outnumbered and under heavy fire from some Remnant Mercenary Force or some big-ass Outer Rim pirate cartel ship is trying to get you in a tractor beam and strip your ship and probably your personal carcass for parts and you think you’re screwed and …poof!…you’re somewhere else. The whole whoppee-I’m-not-going-to-die-now rush, you can’t beat that...it's the thrill of relaxation.”

Dameron was a few steps ahead of them and Bodhi caught her eye behind his back and mouthed  
“ L-Y-I-N-G.”

 

 

 

 

“Light speed is nothing,” Dameron told her after her first ground simulator run-through, “literally nothing and nowhere. It’s the opposite of piloting, it’s sitting. On a transport ship you can wash the dishes or do push-ups or something but in a single-man fighter craft you’re stuck watching particle math fly by the window and listening to yourself breathe. Once you are in light speed you don’t need to think because you can’t DO a damn thing in there except wait to come out.  File your nails, chat with your droid, look at your charts…..whatever…. Joma says that Antoc Merrick used to practice his singing …..just stay calm. The bitch is that the second you drop out, boom! You’ve got to be a pilot again, instantly.”

“Fine, sir, just please avoid the use of the word ‘Boom!” she had said, which made him laugh.

Privately she thought, _Easy for you to say flyboy, I grew up in a place where “Scavenger”is a legit job description. We all pretty much live off the bones of ships that fucked up in hyperspace and drop out the end of corridors like crushed cello cups._

 

 

 

 

 

****Kaylyra are you alright?****

She had told to 2B to call her by her name.

_You could designate “Sir. “Ma’am” “Cadet” or, she assumed just about anything else appropriate but you had to be willing to have it repeated to every other droid on base. This was irrefutable evidence of droid humor for sure. Bod had tried “Super Pilot,” only to hear every loader, message box, sanitation unit and caff dispenser say “Good morning Super Pilot” for a week to hilarious effect._

  
“Yes. I’m fine…I think…am I?”

****Your heart rate is slightly elevated but that is normal for conditions. Coordinates for re-group in 15 seconds. Do you affirm?***

“*Yes, Twobee. Initiate drop out at Mark.”

11…10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1…

  
The universe was back.

 

 

“Congratulations Cadet Squadron. This is Commander Wexley, Report in and set formation.”

“Cadet 1. Novan here, sir.”

_Polly._

“Cadet 2, set. Boren here.”

_Hello Super Pilot._

Cadet 3, set. Andor here, sir.”

“Cadet 4. Limna, here.”

_Losa._

“Cadet 5. Kensii here.

 _Max_.

“Let’s not wast time, Cadets, because I guarantee you the First Order won’t. Defensive maneuvers now. Gunnery check at Mark. Let’s go!”

 

 

 

 

  
She spent the better part of the next two hours in simulated attack of an abandoned flight station with rigged holo- defenses.  Wexley called three unexpected hyper-space jumps back and forth and as they came out of one of them they were ambushed by what appeared to be eight attack ships. Kayly had taken faux-engine damage at the station attack… _2B was honor bound to fly as if it were a real hit_ …she ordered the Bean to adjust the field angle to broaden her target range on her remaining cannon but took a second hit from the “attack group.”

 

 

****Oooooooo******* 2B said, and shut down power.

“Cadet 3. Down.”

_She was dead two hours and three point seven minutes into her first space battle._

 

 

 

_“There is no crying in space,” Diree had informed them._

_“It fogs up your flight goggles,” Dameron had said._

_“That’s bullshit, I’m afraid,” Bodhi Rook told her, “Everybody cries in space. I cried constantly. The Mon Calmari get poetic about it, they call it “eyes that look homeward” because…you know, salt water. That top zipper pocket on your left sleeve in a flight suit? Tissues. If you’ve got a fighter helmet on you just stuff them right up under the cheek guards.”_

 

 

 

Everybody was "dead" except for Polly and she had lost FTL jump-drive and was stranded with only one working engine and shield damage.

 

Commander Wexley broadcast command code and lit them all back up.

“Cadet Squadron, set calculations, hand over flight control. Command will set jump coordinates back to base.”

 

All of them had to go back in Security formation with staggered re-entries to hide their flight signatures and numbers on the approach to Resistance Base.

As Yavin System appeared around her and Yavin IV came into sight, Kayly went through the landing sequence with Twobean almost without thinking and brought the X-wing down on the far strip.  Bod and Max were already there. She pulled the tissues out from under her cheek guards and stuffed them in her sleeve.

 

They were supposed to report to the pop-up flight classrooms, individually first and then as a group, to for assessment. She took her helmet off and walked in.

Commander Diree was there waiting for her along with Commanders Wexley and Joma. 

 

 

Bodhi wasn’t sitting in on fighter reviews. He’d recused himself for all of her checks and exams anyway, although sometimes she wondered what he’d told people about why.

 

_The Resistance was funny that way. People just made assumptions._

_One of the Technicians had asked her to carry a message pad to Bodhi once, saying, “Tell your uncle the rest of the shuttle checks are in.”_

_Only Commander Joma asked about her, and only once._ _After a simulator test, she’d called Kayly’s name, then paused, looking up from a data pad._

_“Andor?”_

_“Yes, Commander.”_

_The older pilot had glanced back toward the rear of the Temple building….the storage corridors….the pillar illegally carved with names._

_“Any relation?” she asked bluntly._

_Kayly answered with the vagueness she’d practiced,  “It's a Festan name. My father’s family was from Fest.”_

_It wasn’t lying and she_ _made very sure she kept her eyes level with Commander Joma’s pale blue ones._

_“Well. Fancy that…fancy that,” the Commander said. The ghost of a smile passed over her face and was gone. The data pad was handed back to her. “Run it again Trainee.”_

 

 

 

“So, Cadet 3,” Commander Wexley said, “What was the first thing you learned from having gotten your ass blown off?”

It was all downhill. R4-2B was there, and it wasn’t like the poor machine-person had any option but to spill every scrap of data. Kayly had to review every turn, acceleration, shot, hesitation and warning light. Right  through the last blast from behind that had taken out her last working engine and “fried” poor 2B.

When they got to the end she hoped it was over, that they’d just let her go out and either throw up somewhere or drink a stiff shot of that highly flammable alcohol Mila D’nar had in his footlocker....or both…and be done with it.

Commander Wexley turned off the data pad, but then he asked her, “What was that trick you pulled with the remaining laser cannon at 1:58:02?”

“Sir?”

 

Commander Diree, tapped 2B and made the little fellow run that section again. Kayly’s x-wing appeared in flickering miniature on the table.

“You authorized a manual reconfiguration to set a wider shot field.”

_She kind of remembered._

The Attack ship had come in behind Polly, she had gone for it but already had one engine gone and shitty flight control by then. Poor 2B had been squeaking like a mouse droid stuck in a closing door. She could hear her own voice on the audio barking “DO IT TwoBean!”

“I thought I knocked that fighter out of formation,” she said, not understanding the question.

“You sure did,” said Joma.”You saved Cadet 1 from taking a fatal shot up the exhaust, gave her time to turn. You significantly cut power to the cannon, though. Even with a direct hit you couldn’t have destroyed that fighter.”

“I couldn’t make a direct kill shot,” she said,… _at least I thought I couldn’t. I was bobbing in the air like a paper ballon at a Market dance_ …. “I was too fucked up…sorry…my trajectory was too insecure because of the engine loss. I went lower power to widen it in hopes of at least clipping it, to get it off Polly’s….Cadet 1’s…. ass.”

“Well, it worked,” Joma said, “You startled the fuck out of me, I thought you were too far off angle to be a risk.”

“I was dead 5 minutes later.”

“Everybody was dead 15 minutes later,” Diree said, “Except for Cadet 1, who was only barely alive because you ordered your droid to make a manual change to a laser cannon spec that I have not actually seen anyone do before….although I promise I’m going to go look it up.”

“Don’t get me wrong kid,” Wexley said, “Your squadron got slaughtered against veteran fighters who outnumbered you and had better equipment, a very non-optimal result…. but if your orders had been to attack that station you could have been considered to have successfully engaged a defensive force and bought time for another team to get in from the other side.”

_Or a ground team to complete a sabotage mission….Endor….the Deathstar…..Blue Squadron at Scarif…..she found she could not look at Commander Joma._

  
“Get some rest, Andor. We’ll go through the squadron action group review in the morning,” Commander Diree said, “in full color with sound.”

 

  
She did five more full fighter training games over five more days, managing not to get killed twice. Once their full squadron even made it back. They were all cleared for possible fighter assignment.

 

 

“What did they say, exactly?” she asked Bodhi, as soon as he got back to the conference tables after. He had sat in on her review, although he did not vote and in a flagrant display of nepotism brought her results to her personally before they were posted.

 

 

“Blah blah blah...That you’re a very good pilot solo and highly capable in multi-ship action.... You have an ‘remarkable understanding of the equipment’….that was Diree… you have excellent reflexes and spacial reasoning and you “think outside the box”…..mostly in the good way,” he smiled at her excitement.

She felt stupidly pleased, but noticed that he was not actually giving her the data pad.

“Let me see it,” she said, “Was there some negative comment?”

“No,” Bodhi said, “no…nothing like that…”

She took the pad from him….”remarkable affinity for ordinance and ballistics....a natural.”

  
_Oh Papa, oh Mama…_ …

 

 

She laid the pad down, and Bodhi put his arms around her.

“I want to go home,” she said against his shoulder and found herself shaking... _she would not let herself cry but it took everything she had just then_.... “I NEED to go home.”

“I know,” he said.

 

 

 

 

The next day he came found her in the Dining Tent, and they went to General Organa with a proposal.

It probably helped that Admiral Ackbar came with them.

 

 

 

  
“Rook,” the General said, after chasing everyone but her golden C3 unit out of the room, “Are you out of your fucking mind? If we could get secure data in and out of the Unknown Sector by simple transmission don’t you think we’d be doing it by now?”

 

“We have a plan, and if it works we may be able toast up a feed for data,” Kayly said, “better and more than you are getting by sending ships in at random like you have been.”

“Flight Cadet Kaylyra Andor,” the General snapped,”I sincerely hope you don’t think we are doing any of this "at random.”

“No ma’am, no,” Kayly stuttered. “I don’t mean that….but I mean we have surveillance inside the Sector, on Ea, it’s not flawless, but we’ve been watching them set terrestrial placements for years. They are pulling shitloads of power somewhere….it’s way past what the old Imperial C-units could do.. we…we’ve got sight of them and actionable data on bases on a dozen worlds that you don’t even have on charts here…..and that’s just what I know about….we…I mean…”

 

“Sweetheart,” Leia Organa sat in a chair, and pointed to another directly across from her, “Sit. Now,…”

Kayly sat. Bodhi and Ackbar kept standing. The General tapped her silver rings on the table’s edge in annoyance….or maybe just impatience. Then she touched a panel on the holo-table and pulled up files that glowed above it.

_Kayly recognized the charts and maps. They were the ones General Draven had sent her. Most very familiar because she’d grown up looking at them._

 

“You have been hedging since you got here, Andor, and Commander Rook there,” she eyed Bodhi sternly, though he seemed far less unnerved by her than Kayly was. _He simply stood with hands behind his back, at attention, very calmly._ “Commander Rook has clearly been hedging for a good 25 years along with that devious geriatric Retired General Davits Draven. I appreciate your situation….you must believe me, all of you…” she looked at Ackbar....”I truly do…far more than you can possibly understand. Your planet is inside what we now know to be New Order controlled space, with all that that implies. Ea has some kind of astonishing data resource, but no protection except the bare hands of the two most astonishing spies and saboteurs the War ever produced. That said, we need to stop pretending because no one seriously believes that a commandeered Imperial Beacon produced these maps and no salvaged Old Republic tech has kept a whole planet hidden from these bastards since Endor. The Resistance needs to know exactly what we are allying ourselves with and who we are getting information to and from before we can proceed. This is non-negotiable, Andor.”

 

The General waited.

  
_Six in eight out.....what would Papa do?_

 

 

“The New Republic didn’t listen,” Kayly heard herself say, surprised to feel so angry, astonished to hear how much her words sounded like Papa’s “quiet” voice.

 

The General closed her eyes and bowed her head ever so slightly.

“I know,” she said.

 

“And the Resistance can’t protect us.”

 

“Maybe not, child, at least not with X-wings...that kind of protection doesn't exist, not really.”

 

 

Leia Organa looked up and leaned forward, clasping her hands together. _For a moment the girl in white Kayly had seen in all the old images seemed to hang like a shadow in the air._ “When I was sixteen your father taught me about how the courage of people we never see, lives committed and risked and lost without a thought, can give the Light the only chances it gets. When I was twenty I heard your mother speak to a roomful of people who wouldn’t listen and her words have carried me for almost thirty years. She said that a day comes when there’s no running from the Dark anymore, no hiding, no choice but to fight. I give you my word, I will not betray them, they gave us nothing less than hope and we destroyed the Empire with it. We need hope again now. I think your people do too.”

 

 

  
_Where’s the Pattern here Eldest Sister?_

Kaylyra closed her eyes and threw the thread.

 

 

“General," she said, "I need a room clear of all recording devices and, I’m sorry C3P0 but I’m going to have to ask you to leave…no offense.”

“None taken Miss Kaylyra,” the droid said and walked stiffly out.

 

 

In the end they just dragged some folding chairs and went way back down into the stone walled caverns of the Temple, into what was now the old storage areas.

There she laid things out for Leia Organa as well as she could.

“Firstly,” she said, “Just so you know... Portia’s not Old Republic tech. They’re the newbies to her and she rags on them fairly often, so you’d better brace yourself upfront for that.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	13. Return to Active Duty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A teeny tiny bit in which Bodhi fesses up to Leia about his 25+years of selective truth-telling. Davits Draven does something moderately heroic in a chapter he's not even in. Leia plans to make a few calls.

 

 

 

 

 

Kayly returned to the barracks to talk to her friends and get other of her affairs in order. Ackbar bowed to Leia and strode off to find Satura.

Bodhi might have stood to depart as well, but he never got the chance.

“A moment, Commander Rook,” the General said.

It was, of course, not a request.

He stayed in his seat as Ackbar’s footsteps echoed oddly down the stone hallway outside that cool and dim alcove in the guts of the main temple.

Leia Organa tapped the lantern on the folding chair beside her to up the light level a little.

“Twenty seven years. The traders of NiJedha were supposed to have the best poker faces in the galaxy, but I always thought you were the exception,” she sighed. “If I wasn’t utterly exhausted I’d slap you Rook.”

Bodhi suppressed a smile. “I can get you some caf.”

“Don’t get smart with me you sneaky old bastard, that’s what I keep Dameron around for.”

Leia Organa leaned back in the rickety chair, even iwhen he was sitting she still had to look up at him. “All these damned years you kept quiet about this?”

 _Ah but you never asked,_ he thought, _no one ever did._

 

“They called it “Lighthouse,” Bodhi told her, “I was kept on the Intelligence roster because if they called for an extraction I was the only pilot we could be pretty sure Portia would always let in. Tonc only had clearance because…well, because it was that or shoot him. As it was, we said goodbye to Jyn and Cassian on a Mon Calmari troop ship six days after Endor and had no direct contact with them after. Until you put me in an interview room with that child I had no idea whether they were dead or alive.”

She tapped her rings against the metal armrest.

“Can I take it that this is one of many things I get to blame Davits Draven for?”

‘I assume so,” Bodhi said. “When Kayli and I saw him he said that he had informed them of Demilitarization Order 11 as soon as it went into final effect and they waived extraction. He immediately crashed all the satellites and relays and burned out every trace of them, destroyed every record. He was convinced it was necessary, although it seemed like paranoia…”

“He was right,” the General said. “Not that he isn't a pathologically suspicious old spook of course who probably still checks his breakfast cereal for listening devices, but in this case, he was right. He saved them by doing it. New Republic Intel was riddled with moles. No matter how high level the encryption, anything to do with assets or surveillance tracking the Unknown Regions would have been ferreted out. The First Order would have burned that little planet to ash decades ago.”

_It was an image that had haunted Bodhi for years and he was sure she knew that._

  
"Could you find it again?” the General asked

He shook his head, ”I don't think I found it the first time. I believe I got close, and when Portia identified me as Alliance and decided not to crash me, she brought me in. It was scary and disorienting, actually."

“This Portia, what is she?"

Bodhi could do nothing but shrug.

"If you made me guess, molecular tech, but please don't make me guess. Portia believes she's probably the last survivor of her kind. If you ask she'll say she's a building. If you ask her again she'll say she's just a navigational station. I don't think she's being humble either, she believes it. Whoever her people were they utilized AI beyond anything we can imagine, ships, stations, platforms, cities. She's awesome when she's not being a pain in the ass."

"So......Those charges we tossed into the tracking station doors at Endor were not just jamming equipment?"

“General Cracken authorized it with Admiral Ackbar’s ok. They were external wireless relay links. Portia cracked Imperial access codes like packets of crisps and with a firm link she can override any system if she assesses it as lacking the capacity for self-awareness and conscious consent. That’s a line she will not cross.”

“Meaning what?"

"The elevator but not the A4 unit that runs the packing system. A standard nav computer but not an integrated droid."

The General nodded, “so…a DC-138 Synar shuttle but not an X-wing with droid piloting engaged.."

Suddenly she laughed, "Oh shit! Endor! R2 couldn't get the blast shield open and Han shot the panel out before I could toss the jammer in, accidentally resealing the doors….for a split second it looked like the read-out on my hand-held monitor said "WTH is wrong with you people?" I thought I was losing my mind."

“There. So you have met her.”

  
“Kaylyra says she dislikes the Jedi.”

“Dislike is a strong word. I only know she trash talks them….I think she’s still annoyed because they drilled holes in her upper stories with light sabers before they knew she was in there. She had some friends among them but I don’t think they ever saw her as more than a useful piece of tech. “Disappointed in” might be more descriptive.”

  
Leia Organa leaned forward again, resting her elbows on her knees to look up at Bodhi, “Do you think if we asked her to…..look for something…..she would agree?”

“Maybe. It depends. Nothing much hides from her if it’s in her range of vision. But she’d have to be convinced it wouldn’t expose her or Ea. They are on the razor's edge out there. Surrounded, probably. You want her to look for confirmation of First Order bases and movements?”

“Yes,” Leia said, “although we don’t have the firepower to act on any intel we find and I doubt we could ever get the New Republic to believe anything we share unless we could confirm the source, but I was wondering if maybe she could find…” she smiled sadly, “Luke.”

  
_He knew Skywalker had vanished, supposedly half mad with guilt after sabotage had wiped out a Jedi training school he had tried to start, killing all the students…..including Leia’s son._

 

Bodhi found it hard to believe that he would have cut himself off from everyone, even his sister. The Luke Skywalker he had known had been a dedicated, optimistic person to whom personal loyalty was central. A change had come over him after Hoth…. _but hell, a change had come over everybody after Hoth_. Bodhi had seen him a number of times after Endor and he’d always asked about Tonc, and other old base friends. Skywalker remembered personal details about everyone he ever met and always had a funny story to share about Captain/Commander/General Solo or Chewbacca.

Solo and Organa had married quietly before Jakku. Opposites attract didn’t even begin to cover it, but Bodhi never forgot her face in the main hanger on Hoth. He’d seen her walk away as if blind with pain after she’d had to authorize sealing the hangar doors that time he’d gone out alone after Skywalker didn’t return from patrol, sure she’d condemned him to die in the cold. Whatever else happened after, he knew she’d loved the guy.

_Word was they’d divorced sometime after their son died._

 

“We can ask,” he said. “But first we have to get a secure link that will pass her muster. With a ship, Kayly and I can set these relays up and send a message from a concealable position in space.. If we get an answer and confirm it, we can get word back to you and you can….”

“Oh no, Commander Rook,” she said, “You mistake me. As much respect and trust as you’ve earned in your long service, I am going with you. You may have forgotten, but I was also an Intelligence operative. I need to talk to this asset myself. Major Andor and and Sergeant Erso may need to be formally reinstated as well. I intend to reactivate Lighthouse.”

 

 

 

 


	14. The Raddus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kayly and her friends go on the Resistance's flagship with high hopes that they may finally find their way home. Admiral Ackbar is a big old sweetie. She recalls her first message from home after two years. Bodhi hears from an old friend. They learn of a loss. Leia Organa puts her foot down, hesitates about one sort of risk but takes on another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They named it The Raddus!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
She stood with Bodhi on the observation deck and marvelled. “Oh hell. This is hardly what I’d call “stealth”….fucking beautiful….but not ‘stealth.”

“It **is** a fine ship, isn’t it?” Admiral Ackbar said appearing abruptly behind them, most pleased at Kayly’s appreciation, “Leia never notices ship design, or pretends not to, unless it annoys her and she wants to complain about the height of the consoles.” … _Bodhi chuckled_ ….“This ship was supposed to be the first of a series of new generation Destroyers and Command craft that the New Republic built using Mon Calmari design crews. Originally the name was supposed to be….ah, something “Tranquillity …” I forget, but I petitioned to name her The Raddus. Not popular at the time….oh, I assure you, you could have heard a pin drop in that room….. but I think the Fleet Oversight Committee agreed because they didn’t know how to say “no” in a room packed with Mon Calmari. Alas, she was also the last. The Demilitarization Act was passed and she was mothballed. Not dismantled, as so many were, because of the perceived insult that would be to Mon Cala, but dry-docked while they decided her fate.”

“At that point, someone,” he winked, which was a disconcerting thing to see, “liberated her” for the Resistance.”

 

  
_“Pardon my language, sir,” she apologized later but that only confused him. “Were you swearing? he said, patting her hands, “I can never tell, people use the oddest words as profanities in Core Basic. Just don’t confuse the droids. We are all in the Navy here.”_

 

 

  
“The Princ….General, has cover plans within cover plans,” Bodhi told her, “In this case, the obvious is that we are taking this, our flagship, out on stealth maneuvers but also using that as a cover to meet with New Republic sympathizers.”

“Ok.”

“….And using that as a cover to deploy our next set of junk repeater relays as each of those returning shuttles unloads garbage and spent fuel rings upon entering hyperspace.”

“They’re helping us?”

“No and yes,” Leia Organa said walking down from the direction of the Command deck, “They have no idea they’re doing it. It’s a maneuver straight out of the old Bothan Spynet playbook. You must tell your father about it when you see him. I like to think he’d be proud of me for it.”

“The little shuttle Commander Rook has put together….I’m not sure the word “built” really applies….. is stored in our hold and can be deployed if and when we can make secure contact with your people through their current dropbox, in the meantime, get some rest. It will take better than a day to dance through all these evasive maneuver jumps and shadow transits. We’ll know soon enough after we get to the rendezvous point to  wait for our New Republic decoys..er, contacts.”…

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
The very first set of relays were dropped during the fighter training exercises.

They’d done enough of them that even if First Order or Remnant spies were watching it should just have looked like more of the same. No one on Kayly’s squad had known that some of the “debris” that Joma was having them tow in and dodge around to practice “dropping-out-of-FTL-into-debris maneuvers were single-use signal boosters to bounce a message around in random piggyback.

They could risk sending from Yavin only once and Commander Joma would be the one to initiate the signal, without even knowing it, when she sent the Cadets their last set of Command coordinates to get back to base. With all the ricochet their signal corridor could stay open as long as 75 seconds.

 

A Destroyer-sized window for Portia, but not long for any humans she was checking in with.

This needed to be code that Kayly could verify to Organa’s satisfaction in order for this whole scheme to go forward.

A corner of the Communications Center on Resistance Base…actually the end of one of the long stone walls with consoles and dividers set up to chaotically enclose a space as a shallow rectangle..…. had been mostly cleared for their use.

The General’s aide, Connix, was running the equipment but otherwise it was only the General, Bodhi, Ava and herself, and Paave.

 

They had both asked to be there. Paave usually avoided the main base like plague but he came. Kayly understood. If something came out from Ea…whether it was light or words or numbers…it meant Ea was still there. He was the child of Far Islanders. He knew that if you could see something, no matter across how far a horizon, you could steer to it. It was possible to get there.

He kept one hand in the pocket of his coveralls and held Ava’s hand with the other.

Kayly and the General sat on either side of Connix. Everyone else stood around.

Commander Joma’s voice came across the comm, “Cadet Squadron, set calculations, hand over flight control. Command will set jump coordinates back to base.”

  
_Kayly had put together the “string” message that no one else could._

 

**….hatchling…uncle….wrestle…..heart…..castle….unbound….sole….know**

 

_Papa and Mama would understand. It was the old code from the war. Draven’s code._

 

The seconds ticked past. Kayly felt Ava’s hand against her back.

  
Connix’s head jerked and her eyes went to the General, “Receiving,” she said.

  
Connix read the signal out loud but Kayly didn’t need that. She knew the words as soon as they lit up in front of her and translated them.

 

“sight….storm….free…hatch….words….rat….chair”

 

“First Order activity all around. We are still secure. We can get data to you. Galen….” _her voice broke_ …”Galen here.”

_He’s alive. My brother is still alive. Ea is still there._

 

She could hear Ava crying behind her.

  
The General laid a hand on hers. “I am so glad, Kaylyra,” she said.

  
“I’m getting a packet,” Connix said, “This thing is huge….General, there are tens of thousands of scan maps in here and a link….what?….I think it’s to a cake bakery on Couruscant”

“Single use drop box,” Bodhi said, “Nobody does random like Portia.”

“Log it, Ko, and start compiling, my authorization only for now.” Leia said. She pushed back her chair. “Then get everything to Satura and Ackbar. We need to start going through this immediately.”

“Good work,” she said to Bodhi, with a glance at Kayly, “both of you.”

 

Ava had reached out as Leia turned to go and caught the General’s hand. She kissed it quickly and the older woman smiled, a little surprised.

“Thank you,” Ava said.

Letting go of Paave, who Bodhi had put an arm around, she held the tips of the General’s fingers in both of hers and bowed her head.

_Kayly had not seen quite what Ava did, but it had looked like Regret…maybe…Regret That What Brings Me Joy Brings You Sorrow._

 

“Oh no,” Leia Organa said gently, “Please Ava, don’t think that. It isn’t that at all.”

She laid her other hand upon the Mem’s head for a moment and then left them all to walk alone toward the Command Center.

The golden C3 unit had been waiting for her in the shadows by the hanger door and slipped stiffly into step behind her.

_When had the General spent enough time with Ava to understand?_

 

 

 

 

Aboard The Raddus, Paave and Admiral Ackbar had taken an immediate liking to each other and the Admiral made a point of walking the young man around the ship, often holding his arm. Sometimes Paave even sang for him, much to the old Mon Calmari’s evident delight. Paave had a beautiful voice, and had told Kayly about how his mother had been a famous traditional singer in the Islands, but he had been so shy about singing since they’d left home.

“He wants all the old songs about the Bequa,” Paave had said in their sleeping room after dinner, “Especially the old Far Islander songs about how the first Queens led the people out to the end of the land and the Bequa came and sang to them, even though they didn’t understand, just to give them courage and carried them out to the First Islands on their backs.”

“Do you know?” he said excitedly, “Where he is from is nothing but oceans and their ships go back and forth between the water and the sky? I only know part of the “Voyage of Idona...” that’s the one about the queen’s daughter who is carried in a bubble of glass down by some Bequa and sees the tops of their great bright cities all made of coral and the bones of ships ….but he loves that one. He says he wants to come to Ea some day and walk right off the last dock at Vision Island and make an embassy to the Bequa.”

_That would blow some Bequa minds for sure._

 

“They’d either love him or they’d eat him,” Ava giggled.

 

 

 

As they had been sitting in the lounge-like benches that lined the observation windows …. _no wonder Portia loved the Mon Calmari, even their battleships had “lounges”_ ….. watching the stars, the commlink that Admiral Ackbar wore on his collar, having no external ear parts, made a faint noise.

“Leia wishes to speak with me.” He paused, listening, “She also says that you should come with me, if you are free, Commander Rook and Cadet Erso.”

“Is something wrong?” Ava asked.

“No,” he reassured them, kindly, ’I can tell because she is not using her “this is an emergency” voice, I know that one quite well after all these years. She says it is a personal message from one of our contacts.”

 

 

 

The General was up on the Raddus’ bridge sitting by a console. Her expression was the one of sad, contained calm. _Kayly thought she had maybe it seen before, on those rare occasions when the General thought she might be unobserved, or when nothing else was going on._

“Gail, Rook,” she said, “I received this a few minutes ago. It will be all over New Republic broadcasts soon…..and no doubt others as well…. but I thought it would be best for you to see it this way first.”

She touched the black counter before her and the small image of a woman flickered into sight. She seemed tall, as much as it was possible to tell such things, and slim with smooth dark golden hair and large, serious blue eyes.

 

*“General Organa,” the image said, “Our family will release a statement shortly but she had left instructions that you, among a few others, should be contacted first by private channels, so my hope is that this reaches you before you learn of it elsewhere. My grandmother, First Senator Mon Mothma has passed from us. Her last illness was long and though her courage and brilliance never failed, this last parting came as a gift for her. Our grief is profound but we know she is with the Force now, amongst all those she loved and lost. She spoke of you often in these last weeks and it is my hope to give you personally messages that she prepared some time ago. May the Force be with you. May the Force be with us all.”*

 

Bodhi bowed his head.

 

_Kayly remembered watching some of Mon Mothma’s speeches during Portia’s lessons in the Tower._

_Mama had been up monitoring the data on the fourth level once and came down to sit on the stairs to watch for a while. “She screwed up big,” Mama said, “But she was the only person who ever straight up said “I’m sorry” after….not ‘decisions had to be made’ or ‘greater good’ or ‘fog of war’ shit….You’d be amazed how rare that is.”_

 

“A great light passes from us….” Admiral Ackbar said closing his large eyes. Then, “This young woman is her grandchild?”

“Yes. Clarissa,” Leia nodded. “This young woman is also one of our New Republic contacts. She will be here in a few hours.”

The General ran her fingers along the edge of the console as the image flickered out.

“Mon’s last gift. She’s giving us another perfect cover for this mission-within-a-meeting-within-a-mission shell game. The Imperial Remnant made her their scarecrow for all that they despised in the Alliance and the New Republic, so their propaganda arms will be tripping all over themselves gloating about her death and posting screeds. That should keep them busy. If the First Order is watching us they may think we are just covering up her secret Rebel wake.”

 

 

 

 

_Kayly had made sure that the coded string they’d left in Portia’s first drop box contained the number 3, so they would know that all of them were ok…Ava’s family, Paave’s father…The return came with another giant packet of scans and set of fairly random space coordinates but also included a string._

_**down feather…palm….sailfish….twin…..shore….pair….eyes…..measureed….lamp**_

  
_“Love you. Love Bodhi too. We are both here watching. Be careful. Portia’s on it.”_

_That had been Mama._

 

 

  
Kayly and her friends needed to hide away from the delegates to avoid any curious questions, so they rested in one of crew rooms. There was a table and chairs and a little couch. Bunks were folded up into the walls in case it needed to be sleeping space... _Mon Cala ships were great_...The three of them tried to play knucklebones with some funny shaped bolts that Bodhi used as playing pieces and had left with them.

_The idea was to help them pass the time and not be nervous. It sort of helped pass the time anyway._

 

“This ship is waaa-aaay better than the other one,” Ava said, “I sometimes don’t feel like I’m going to throw up for whole minutes at a time.

“Could you fly this one, if you had to?” Paave asked.

“Don’t even joke about it,” Kayly said, “This is the kind of ship that mostly flies itself unless you need it to do something unexpected or insane.”

“Like a good ship should,” Paave said, “I think I’ve won more than enough from you two to go out to Blue and pay one of those fine, fine boatbuilders to make me my own boat now.”

 

_“Don’t get your hopes up,” Bodhi had tried to tell them. “This may not work.”_

_And even if we can go home, Kayly told Ava, things there will have changed. We have changed. We will bring this war with us._

_“No,” Ava said, “Those black-hearted murderers brought the war to us. No matter what we are all soldiers now. Cassian-ally told me that once “Know what you fight for and know what you fight against,” he said, and we all do.“_

 

 

She had thought, that after the last delegates left, that Bodhi would come down to talk to them, but there was a knock on the door instead. The General wanted all three of them on the Command Deck.

They walked up together.

 

Ava and Paave had never been there before and it had to be Paave’s worst nightmare, beautifully arranged as it was.

Doors opened by themselves Holos were everywhere. Messenger droids and translator units were scooting around the edges and Admiral Ackbar stood facing out the wide window screen like he was facing into a wind that no one else could feel.

 

_“Who won?” Bodhi asked._

_“Me,” said Paave, and Bodhi shook his hand._

 

The General was standing by a display table and tiny maps and scans were dancing across it.

“Now that everybody’s here...We have your relay system in place, Kaylyra, but the scans your parents and your friend Portia are giving us scare the hell out of me, quite frankly. They are showing us First Order activity beyond anything we could have anticipated. Some of what we are seeing makes no sense to us and we need more direct communication than we can get in these fits and starts. I need to talk your people by direct transmission.”

“Come with us,” Ava said, running forward to take the General’s hand again, diagonally, palm to palm in Request for Companionship on a Venture of Importance. “You can talk to Jyn and Cassian-ally yourself and Ancient Portia and the Sisters.”

“Oh, I wish I could,” the General said. “I hope to, but I cannot put the Resistance at risk until I know more….” she laughed..”I can’t believe this is coming out of my mouth and I’m hoping to change the situation very soon but right now, as much as I hate it, I am “too fucking important.”

The General tapped the table and, amidst the dancing charts a message came up.

 

“Private Andor, and yes I just promoted you, we received this when we opened the last drop box...a traffic coordination unit on Chandrilla...does this say what I think it says?”

There was a coordinate set and a time stamp lit up in front of her, then a series of text.

Kayly read, “They are loud and they move constantly. Hold still here and let me talk to Bodhi Rook….”

“Ok,” she said, “Ma’am please understand that this is definitely Portia talking," and went on reading..

…”I respect you people but you screwed this up before.”

 

“Well, she’s mean, but she’s not wrong,” the General said, “What does she mean “talk”?”

 

_Kayly forced herself not to turn and look at Bodhi Rook, but she could not force Ava and Paave not to._

 

“Ok,” Bodhi said, “About that….”

“DAMN it, Rook!”

Bodhi took the cuff from his ear. “It always had limited range. The furthest I ever had a clear connection to Portia with it was when she got me to the Mon Calmari on the Defender, trying to get the Bothan agents away from Endor. I last heard her voice on that room ship evacuating me after Endor. It's possible the collapse of the Sanctuary Pipeline and the decay of all that Imperial equipment she ping-ponged off of messed things up. I have never been able to figure out how the damn thing worked anyway. Jyn had to break it before we could even…”

 

“Oh Fucking hell. What does it do when it **does** works?”

 

“You hear her, she hears you.”

 

“Audio only?”

 

“From her end, yes…did I mention we broke it? I… that is… whoever wears it, gets input directly through the auditory nerve. Also she can see what you see, hear what you hear and monitor your basic bio readings.”

 

“The hell?“

General Organa shook her head as if deeply and profoundly annoyed. She picked up the earpiece and turned it over in her hand. “And you’ve been wearing this thing for almost thirty years and not heard a peep?”

 

Bodhi stood silent for a moment, hands behind his back.

“I took it off, for a lot of years... after Jakku,” he said, quietly. “Maybe I lost hope after not hearing anything for so long. Maybe I was afraid. Maybe Portia was afraid. I don’t know.”

 

Well,” the General handed it back to him, “I guess we’ll know in three minutes, won’t we?”

Bodhi placed the cuff back on his ear.

 

“My parents have the other one,” Kayly said.

 

“Can we use it to talk to them?” Organa asked.

“No,” Bodhi said, “Not directly. It only talks to Portia. It was made for one of her people…one of her “organic” family, as she says …who had a physical handicap and..”

Connix stepped up. “General we are at the time and coordinates sent but are receiving no..”

 

Bodhi leaned forward suddenly and laid his hands on the table.

“Wow” he said.

He seemed halfway between laughing a little and crying. “Hello, Portia.”

 

Kayly smiled and took his arm.

 

“No,” Bodhi was saying, “It’s still the same. It’s ok, I know….it’s alright Portia, I probably would have worried more if it wasn’t…him.”

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and looked at Kayly.

 

“Hi Portia,” she said. _I love you._

"She says hi,” Bodhi laughed.

  
Ava squealed and took Bodhi’s hands, “Hello! Hello Ancient Portia, can you see me?”

  
“What the fuck is going on?” Connix, who did not usually swear on duty, said. “We are reading no signal whatsoever.”

  
“Can anybody else hear that?” a voice said. Leia Organa was staring at Bodhi Rook in absolute astonishment.

“You can hear him….her?” Bodhi asked, equally stunned.

"Not…not a voice…” the General said, sounding very young suddenly, “It sounds like…music…wind chimes or something.” She looked around her, “Honestly, am I the only one hearing this?”

“Yes, General,” Connix said.

 

Leia Organa looked at Bodhi and held out her hand.

“No,” he said, “You really don’t want to do this.”

“I told you…at this point in my late career in war I won’t take on an Intelligence asset I haven’t vetted myself, Rook.”

“Your Highness….”

“This is an order, Commander.” She held her hand out to him.

“Portia,” Bodhi said, “The General wants to…”

Then he fell silent and nodded, reaching up to take the silver cuff from his ear.

“Listen.." he told the Leia Organa, "You need to understand. All she is doing is creating auditory impulses. She had no control over whose voice your brain decides to transcribe them as. Everyone hears someone different. Cassian hears his mother. I hear…a man I knew a long time ago…there’s no way to know..”

_Kayly had never worn it. Neither had Galen, as far as she knew. Her parents had told her how it worked and that each person would hear it differently. They were never supposed to touch it, which wasn't;t usually an issue since one of them was usually carrying it at all times Papa said it was always his mother's voice but Mama never said exactly who she heard….”an old teacher” she’d say…but Mama had never had Lessons._

 

“Rook....please.”

The General took off the heavy silver earring she was already wearing on her right ear, laid it on the console and held out her hand again.

Bodhi laid the small clip in her palm.

 

“Just put it close,” he said, gently as if he were afraid of hurting someone. “It will attach itself.”

Leia Organa put on Portia’s ear cuff to hear whatever voice she would hear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Leia.


	15. The Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two tough old ladies, sitting around talking. Leia and Portia have a chat.
> 
>  
> 
> Were people actually betting on this?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She had always had a good sense of direction, could always find things for people when they lost them…keys, gloves, caf mugs, blasters.

Han had once actually called her out of a tense Trade Conference on Chandrilla, “Hey kid, sorry to bother you but, just wondering if you know where I left the little blue and chrome….”

“Fucking hell, Han…You can’t just… Look in the drawer in the front cabin, the one by the service hatch.”

“I looked there already. Oh, wait….thanks, babe.”

  
But that was not the Force, that was just paying damned attention, right?

 

 

 

“You can do this,” Luke had said to her, “If I can find it in myself, you can. It’s no different. Focus. See what’s there and breathe on it, like an ember. There is no way to know unless you try.”

_He wanted to train her, in those first days, she knew. He wanted it to be a thing they learned about, reclaimed, together._

No time, she’d told him. There had been a war to fight, a government to build, battle, politics, statecraft, negotiation. She needed to be a Fighter, a General, then a Senator, a political leader, a figurehead,…a mother….a wife…

But all that had been excuses, not reasons.

 _The difference was, my dearest friend, my dear brother…_. so many times she told him before he finally accepted it, to this very day she did not know if he had ever really believed it…. _.the real difference was that she did not want it, not the way he did._

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
Only a handful of times in her life had she felt anything like what he described feeling. That connection, that sense of a space, a light, an energy between things that you could step between as easily as you would slide your hand through an open window because you saw now that it was open and not closed.

When she had been a very young child, maybe three or four, there had been an incident.

She and another girl had been climbing those gnarled old trees in the Arboreal Gardens, during a diplomatic reception. Off limits of course, but when did that stop children, ever? The other girl, Nessia,…. _funny that she remembered that, an ambassador’s daughter_ ….had stepped on a branch that was too weak to hold her weight and fallen.

When her father came running, along with the one of nannies, Nessia and the broken branch had both been safe on the soft grass fifty yards away. “Leia caught me,” the little girl had said.

Which was absurd, because she had still been in the tree.

“Are you alright?” she remembered her father saying over and over, as he waved everyone else away and lifted her down in his own arms, a terribly worried look on his face. It had perplexed and frightened her. Why was he asking her and rushing her away? She hadn’t fallen, Nessia had, but Nessia was ok.

_Twenty years ago an elderly woman had approached her at one of the memorial conferences, one of the diplomatic staff nannies it turned out, and told her the whole story again. “He was a wonderful man, your father. I remember how the very next day he offed me a full scholarship position and stipend at the Siaan University on the Outer Rim and my whole life changed…”_

 

_What would have happened if you’d told the truth then father?_

_Would it have changed anything?_

_Would it have changed everything?_

_I didn’t want to know, Luke._

 

 

 

 

 

When she was pregnant with Ben, even when they weren’t waking her up with status reports on Lothal and Kashyyk every hour on the fucking hour, she couldn’t sleep because she was roasting hot and uncomfortable.

She would find herself lying on a bare cot, all of her blankets and sheets on the other side of the room

“You are probably just throwing them off in your sleep because you’re hot,” Mon had said in a motherly way, picking up all the stacks folded against the door before the droids could. “Remember Yavin IV at noon, in the hot season? It was like that for me every day through both my pregnancies. It’s normal.”

 _Really? And how am I folding them at the same time I’m throwing them then?_ she’d wondered.

It hadn’t even frightened her, as much as annoyed her.

_I unconsciously tap into the great binding energies of the universe and I stop to line up the edges of bed linens first? What the hell is wrong with me?_

“Huh,” Han had said, when she told him. “The fitted sheet too? Brilliant! There you go your worship, that has GOT to be the Force. Nobody can fold a fitted sheet without mystical powers.” _Han, for whom there was no foreshadowing, no angsty self-questioning, ever….almost ever._ He’d laughed and patted her stomach, “Good news kiddo,” he’d said, “you’re never going to have to make your own bed, ever, Momma’s gonna do it.”

  
_He’d done it more than once, found her wherever she was, in Command bunkers, or on shielded ships. Who was going to stop him? He’d elbow his way in, skipping debrief between Pathfinder deployments, still reeking of cordite and smoke…setting off every weapons proximity alarm the security droids had because he never remembered to take his gun off first…to kiss her, lay his head in what little remained of her lap and start straight out talking to her stomach, “So hey Bennyboy, Poppa’s been kicking the dying Empire’s ass, what have you been up to?”_

 

 

 

 

At Bespin, running…Han gone, Luke gone…burns on both palms from over-firing blasters. Punching the engines on the Falcon into thrust… _that sudden pool of silence had opened around her, spreading outward like a bubble_ …..Every other sound, the engines, Chewie roaring obscenities at Lando in-between barking flight instructions to her, the pounding of her own heart, had still been there, still audible…. _.but there was a space between them all and she was inside it._

Then Luke’s voice clear and insistent.

  
             Leia, Can you hear me? Leia, help me.

  
An image of him, burned and bleeding, clutching at life, hanging from a wire. The son of a bitch had cut his hand off.

_Not like a dream, but like something formed as a present memory. A thing seen but bypassing her eyes entirely. She knew where he was as if she could reach out and touch him….actually started to lift her hand to do it._

That wasn’t me, that was you, she’d protested later. “No,” he’d said, “not like that. That was different. That was you.”

 

 

Nothing remotely like it had ever happened again. Until now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
Everybody else was still there and still talking. Gail was at the helm, brave and true. _“Hold position, cloaking at maximum_ …” Connix was looking at her, more than a little frightened. _“General?...”_ Rook was looking at her, something like pity in his eyes., “ _Shhhh, give her a minute_ .…” The girl, Cassian Andor’s daughter, _“Bodhi is she really…_?”and the rest of the bridge crew, the beeping, the humming…

 

  
[Hello, Leia Organa.]

_Queen Breha Antilles-Organa of the Royal House of Alderra, High Lady of the Elder House of Birren, Thrice-tested Wearer of the Mantle of Peace._

_Her mother’s voice, of fucking course._

This was the second most painful of what she figured were her four worst case scenarios, but number three and four would have been so very much worse.

_Alright, let’s do this._

[Oh my, well, that’s odd.]

“Portia?”

[Yes. I know that Bodhi explained this to you already, but I do apologize if the voice you’re hearing increases your stress. It seems to be an unavoidable complication.]

“Right. What did you mean “odd?”

[You see things a little differently, that’s all]

_Uh?_

“Thank you…I suppose.”

_Everyone was looking at her, now. Screw this. She was not going to stand around listening to her dead mother’s voice in a roomful of people._

“Allright. If I have to talk to myself out loud for the next ten minutes I’m going to go do it in that conference room. All of you stay here.”

Connix said, “General that might not be safe…what if..?”

[Are they concerned about your health in general or are they just suspicious that I might do you some sort of mental injury?]

“The latter I think.”

[Why does everybody worry about that? I’m only a small navigational station….on the other side of the galaxy, in this case]

“3PO, come with me and run for help if I appear to be acting oddly or suffering any ill effects”

 

“Oh my….yes...but,General….do you really think?”

 

[Good heavens. What have you done to that poor creature? There is no sane reason for him to look like that.]

“Command Room 2! If I’m not out in ten pick a new General.”

 

She strode quickly, with C3-PO in her wake. Connix and Terren tried to follow, but Rook held up his hand to stop them and Gail, bless him, barked an order for everyone to stand down and let her go. The small “room” was at the back wall of the bridge, between the lifts. One wall was of thick plas-glass but with a retractable door so she could talk with a little privacy and in the very unlikely event that she cried her back would be to any watching eyes.

_Except for 3PO, but Force knew he’d seen her cry before._

  
The bit that shook her hard was when she sat down and looked up over at the polished black of deactivated screen on the side wall of the tiny room.

_Rook hadn’t said anything about that._

The reflection she saw was not her own. No one had told her she would see her mother as well as hear her.

 

“Shit. Does that usually happen?”

[What?]

“3PO, whose reflection is showing in this glass??

“Is that a trick question Mistress Leia?”

[Oh, that IS interesting.]

_She looked at her hands. They were still her own. She looked at the reflection and lifted her hand. Her mother only looked at her quizzically, head tilted, hands still on her lap._

“This doesn’t happen to the others, does it?”

[No. You do seem to perceive energy signatures differently than Jyn, Cassian or Bodhi. I noticed it immediately but thought it would be impolite to mention. The shift in input is very small really, but it must be just enough to register and stimulate your brain to access a visual. Is it the same person whose voice you’re hearing?]

“Yes.”

_Oh hell. Hair down and not even in the formal portrait robes. She was wearing those lavender trousers and soft white shirt she had worn in the private quarters on “family night” when Leia was very young, before…before things began to change. There were no holos of her in this outfit, she would never have allowed it. She didn’t look a day over thirty_

 

[Well, at least it’s consistent. I’m very sorry. This must be quite distressing. You aren’t one of the Knights.]

_It wasn’t a question._

 

[May I ask, what happened to your brother? The one that tried to start the whole Jedi business up again?]

_Who was interviewing who?_

 

“You mean Luke. Do you know where Luke is?

[Right now, at present? No.]

“But you’ve seen him?”

[Quite a bit. I got an especially close look at him on the second weapons station before we destroyed it….you did very well by the way, it wasn’t your fault that idiot jammed the door controls, I realize I may have been a little brusque at the time. It was a stressful situation. The last time I saw Luke Skywalker was thirteen years ago. I liked to check up on him periodically. He was poking around …in the Outer Rim as you call it….on your charts it would be the Ossus region…. close to R6]

_The Ancient Jedi Library. It was an abandoned archeological site now, stripped generations ago._

_What were you looking for Luke?_

_Wait a minute. Is she talking slowly because she thinks I’m stupid?_

 

“I know how to read a star chart.”

[None of you do, really, but that’s not the point, the point is I really haven’t seen him since then. No flight plans and he purposely damaged the ship he was flying in such a way as to prevent even placement pings or a consistent power signature. I did notice that. He prized out all the conscious mechanical elements. Those Incom-FreiTek T-70’s were never meant to work that way. That kind of damage would normally lead me to firmly project that he crashed it, but since it would also cause me to project that the ship was totally unflyable and I know he flew it, I’m going to have to withhold supposition.]

_This business of her lost mother’s reflection talking like some kind of Praxian librarian was very taxing, to say the fucking least._

 

“Will you help me find him?”

  
[I will keep looking. At one time I was able to locate the individual Knights over quite a distance by the distinctive energy signals of their laser weapons. If I have access to even half-way decent sensors I can track damaged or less refined crystals too. I track Jyn by her mother’s necklace. Unless his weapon has been completely destroyed, shielded, otherwise blocked from my sight I can find it eventually. I will keep an eye out.]

_She looked over at the polished surface. Her mother’s young face envisaged a kind of cool concern, even sympathy._

 

[I’m so sorry, Leia Organa. I understand how painful it is to look for missing family and not be able to find them, to live without closure. If it comforts you, the last time I saw him he was still completely uninfected by it.]

_What?_

 

“Uninfected by what?”

[The Darkness. I can’t say I understood or agreed with many of the things he did, but he didn’t seem to be touched by it at all. Whatever he did, he seemed to be doing it himself. I’d never have let him leave the second weapon station if I thought otherwise.]

_The room seemed cold suddenly._

 

[You are free of it too, if you need reassurance on that score.]

  
“The Dark side. You mean the Dark Side of the Force?”

[The Fury, we called it. The Enemy. The Blackness virus. I didn’t understand what the Knights were talking about half the time but as soon as they said it devoured their brothers I knew that about this, at least, we were on the same side. We always have been. It’s why I agreed to talk with you.]

_Breha Organa’s dark eyes looked fierce now. Her mother had never looked like this, not in any reality Leia could imagine._

 

[I will tell you because, from what I know of you, I think you will understand. It consumed or killed everyone I loved and took everything away from me, all my siblings, our worlds, my brothers, my friends. It left me hiding in a hiding place not unlike Jyn’s cave that she still has nightmares about. It made me choose who would die so that others could live, like Cassian had to do and still cannot forgive himself for.]

“You can sense the Dark Side?”

[Sense it? That phrasing implies subtlety. I can HEAR it. constantly these days. The damned beasts never shut up.]

“Portia, how long did you know the Jedi?”

  
[Assuming you don’t need the exact dates, not terribly long, a thousand years, give or take. Why?]

“I believe my brother was looking for….answers…at the most ancient Jedi sites.”

[Oh good heavens. I can send you some of my old maps of their territories, I had moderately good sensor access in those days, but I must admit, almost every Knight I ever met already thought they had all the answers so I have no idea how they ranked any of their various shrines..]

“Thank you.”

[When I say “give or take” I must tell you that I shut down for fifty or sixty years at one point during that time, I’m not proud to admit that but I did. I heard the sound of the Enemy that I thought was …not dead, I wasn’t such a fool…… but gone, held at bay. I became overwhelmed and I panicked and then was ashamed of doing so. It occurs to me, maybe that’s what your brother has done. I‘m not sure what would have happened to any of us on my home except for K2SO. He brought Jyn and Cassian to us, by accident, I think and I still don’t know exactly how, but he did it. He loved Cassian and he was trying to save them both. In saving them he saved me.”

_That huge terrifying re-worked K2 Imperial Security unit that had stalked around Massassi Base on Yavin IV? She’d seen it coming around a corner in the weeks before Scarif and damned near had a heart attack._

_She thought of Dameron and his BB8. That little fellow would perish to save Poe a thousand times over. How many times had R2 saved Luke? Then shut himself down rather than go on without him. Who is to say what love is and who gets to feel it?_

 

“Thank you for the data you’ve sent us, Portia.”

[You’re welcome but you don't have enough ships. Sooner or later, but most likely sooner they will come for you. They are setting up beacons and testing new jump routes.]

“I know. We still have some hope that our sympathizers in the New Republic...."

[Oh, I apologize if I was unclear, I meant the New Republic. Your Resistance has ridiculously too few ships. Your people are brave and clever....some of them are even both but the Enemy have done nothing but gut worlds and build weapons for twenty years. Believe me when I tell you, they will tear you apart]

“Thanks for your optimism.”

_A faint smile seemed to tug at the corner of her mother’s mouth._

[I didn’t say they’d win. Their weaknesses are the same as they have always been.]

Can I speak with Major Andor?

[No. I don’t want to play go-between. That’s silly, mistake-prone and time wasting. Not by direct signal, from here either. Too risky. Defense of this world is my first priority. They both know I’m talking with you now. Cassian is vaguely horrified because he is afraid I will be rude, Jyn is asking questions about what you are wearing. We will have to find another way.]

_Her young mother leaned forward._

[We don’t have long on this connection. It was hard enough to find a spot with access and we will lose it soon. Leia Organa, I will be your ally. We have no weapons and no ships but I can get you data and we will do what sabotage we can….Cassian and Jyn are very resourceful. We will send you another bundle with some ideas and information. I will search for any sign of your brother and get word to you. Send our children home to us, if they want to come. We need them. Give us Bodhi Rook and one ship. A broken one will do, he’s good at fixing things.]

 

“Mistress Leia…I mean General…the 15 minutes are up,” it was C3PO.

  
Rook was tapping on the glass.

 

_She stood up and her mother stood up too._

 

“Give Rook your coordinates, Portia, I will talk to the rest of my Council, but I think we can make a deal. We’ll find a way.”

 

_Breha Antilles-Organa, Last Queen of Alderaan, nodded._

  
Leia opened the door and Rook and Connix came in, no doubt confused as to why she was staring at her own reflection on a black glass wall screen.

Leia looked back one last time and took the clip from her ear. It came off easily.

_Goodbye, Mother._

 

Connix looked worried....she must look quite strange. “ Is everything alright, General?”

“Yes, dear.”

Rook ’s expression was one of utter sympathy.

 

_One of the last surviving sons of the Holy City of Ni-Jedha. She remembered the first time she saw him, drugged, wrapped in bacta, torn apart by a grenade on Scarif._

_“We can neither of us ever go home,” he’d whispered, in pain._

_Whose voice do you hear, Bodhi Rook?_

 

 

She held the little ring out to him and he took it.

“We have three minutes left, Commander, get the next location from her. We have plans to make. I’m going to lie down for a while.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	16. Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaylyra Andor and her friends, along with Bodhi Rook re-assemble a ship to take them back home with a messages and a mission for the Resistance. 
> 
> Mr. Kes Dameron gives Kayly a gift. 
> 
> The Resistance tries to prepare for a looming storm by arming and moving Base. Bodhi and Kayly says there goodbyes to many friends they know they may never see again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Hola señor. Es muy bueno volver a verte” = "Hello, sir, it's very good to see you again."

 

 

 

 

 

It was, in fact, the ship they came in on.

 

At least it had the very same core of a stripped-down seventy year-old Curich 1 Seinar shuttle.

 

 

 

  
Kayly remembered how Mara brought the shell of it down on a wagon-sledge from the North one winter when they were kids and how they had all played inside it, she and Galen and Nikki and Ava and Kemmi…. _she must have been nine or ten._

It had been completely stripped long ago by generations of Scavengers. _No stories about it had mentioned finding bodies inside. Mara had asked, she said._ The only thing still intact had been the exterior frame. All the exterior and interior siding  had been cut out and inside it had been totally gutted, wiring, and equipment, even the seats were long gone.

No doubt someone had bolted curved runners onto them decades ago and they were probably still serving as rocking chairs in some Mem village Common House.

_Why had they brought it down originally? She really couldn’t quite remember. At one time she had assumed that her parents started trying to reassemble a working shuttle only after the attack at RiverTown ten years ago, but maybe the brutal arrival of eight storm troopers had just put new urgency into it._

Looking back she realized they had probably been assembling parts for years.

 

  

The mismatched engines arrived last, the year she turned fifteen. Some Coastal Bequa brought one and nudged it up the Green River Channel on a raft while the other got pushed onto the Yellowlegs Beach north of HarborTown. Papa worked on them, usually with Portia’s help. Mama had spent a lot of time splicing, coding and trading in the circuit boards, Kayly remembered. It had been a kind of Lessons project too, all the kids had gotten involved. Scavenger crews had actually brought them things and volunteered time and tools to help weld and assemble. Not just Dov and Keen and Sissi’s local crews either but some of the Northern Mem Scavengers and a Human crew that built and sold little the junk gliders down in the RiverLands. A lot of crews had spent so many years getting good at taking ships apart, they were half eager to get a chance to put one together.

 

 

 

 

 

The first time Papa fired up the engines he had made everybody stand well back, on the far side of the field behind the wall, even though Portia had assured him that it would be fine.

“Cassian, I agree the thing is an abomination to look at but it seems unlikely to explode during  a basic ignition sequence,” she said, connecting to "inside” access with the data computer and a good look at the patchwork ship after they assembled it by the base of her tower.

“I think we should paint the whole thing bright blue,” Galen said, “inside and out.”

Blue was his favorite color.

“That could only help,” Portia agreed. “If any of you ever get your hands on any high-thermal reflective enamel please paint the thing.”

Papa had gone in alone the first time to test it and Mama made him wear her crystal, the one that had been her mothers and she always wore on a string around her neck.

“Jyn,” he said,” It will be fine. Portia says…”

“Hmmhmm…Absolutely,” Mama said, “But if I have to stand by the wall, you have to wear the necklace, so shut up.”

Papa put it on and tucked it inside his shirt.

The engines had fired up and all of Nexa cheered. Papa took it up, maybe a hundred feet or so flew it around over the village, then down to the ponds and back again before setting it at the end of the field. That was as high and as far as it ever really went, and only then when Portia was 100% sure there were no eyes on them.

It had all it’s working parts in the end and even a full lightspeed jump engine set-up with it’s own tiny dedicated computer so they could all eventually practice the sequence for jumping into hyperspace, theoretically, someday. In the end, Kayly was the only person who ever actually did it.

They needed to teach people to fly ships before they actually had ships to fly on.

 

 

 

 

 

  
Bodhi had gone over it carefully with stress sensors, not long after they had landed at Yavin IV.

“Completely intact frame,” he said, seeming to marvel a little. “No hairline micro-fracturing, no visible stress of any kind, not even the workday compression you’d expect from multiple standard FTL jumps. There has got to be a story there.” _He knew all about Ea, the kind of tech they had there, and how they came by it….the Scavenger “lifestyle” as Mama used to call it_. “If I you made me guess, I’d say it didn’t crash. It’s an old model but as clean as if somebody took it off the Sienar factory floor seventy years ago and just flew it straight to Ea.”

 

The rest of it was a stitched up mess. One of the maintenance droids LC-9,  said they counted parts from 38 different kinds of ships in the little shuttle. For the first few weeks it had been a sort of a curiosity for the mechanics on the Resistance base. Everybody had all wanted to come and see this thing that shouldn’t have been able to fly but did. She got the impression Bodhi gave tours when she wasn’t around. He refused to let them scrap it though and had started tinkering almost immediately.

 

It seemed like he did it partly because it connected him to her parents in some way. When he was working inside, with his head under a panel, or in the engine assembly she’d hear him say things like “Oh hell no!” or “Cassian what were you thinking?” When he finally re-set the navigational system and synced up the new systems he’d installed with what remained of the old computer he fired up a test and immediately dissolved into laughter. “Jyn,” he’d said wiping tears from his eyes with his sleeve.

By then Kayly had realized the most ship sensor system read-outs did not have a warning level that read “too fucking hot.”

 

_New recruits had started showing up from UR border systems and Outer Rim worlds that the First Order and their sympathizers were gobbling up outright. Flat-out escaped as refugees, most of them from little mining company planets and manufacturing systems that the bankrupt Sienar and Tekk companies had abandoned after the De-Militarisation Act and Privatization Initiative. Ostensibly they were “bought” by investors on Remnant worlds but nobody was even bothering to pretend much anymore._

_Kayly had seen a handful come in from little ore-extraction platform planets in the Otomok System. She remembered the name once she saw it. It was one of the systems Portia had gotten glimpses of in her scans. It had probably always been a hardscrabble place, but from Ea they’d watched the First Order tear it apart. As she’d walked out to her fighter for one of her last exams she’d seen two girls get off the transport. They been holding hands, sisters by the look of them one older, protective, faking confidence and one younger rounder-cheeked and more visibly nervous. “It’ll be ok, Rose,” she heard the older one say, “We’re Rebels now. At least we get to fight back.”_

_She thought of how she must have looked better than two years ago, out on that landing strip with Ava and Paave. She thought of Galen._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
In the days after they had gone out in the Raddus and the General had talked to Portia… _That must have been a HELL of a conversation because the General had to go lay down for an hour afterwards and the General never slept ever_ ….…a number of things began to happen. The most dramatic was that Resistance Base was being moved. Yavin IV would remain a figurehead and communication post but the Fleet and most of the personnel would be setting up on the Outer Rim somewhere.

_She wasn’t supposed to know where._

 

Yavin had been a symbolic first step. A visual to represent the Resistance as the true heirs of the Alliance legacy and a reminder to shame the New Republic into action. As the former it had been effective, as the latter, maybe not so much. Now time was running out and they needed to gather more ships, people and equipment and a find a secure place to organize.

_Kayly wondered if Portia had advised it or if this was happening now because of some information she had given Organa. It made her think of HarborTown moving ships out and battening down before a storm because the Sisters had read a Pattern and told them it was coming._

  
Just before they bugged out, Mr. Kes Dameron had come up to visit the base. The local population of Yavin IV, or the “non-coms” as people on base called them, lived almost entirely on the coast. The Resistance had a few facilities down there because they had taken over the old civilian and Rebel Alliance ones but the locals did not come to the base. Some of it was security and some of it was an attempt to… _what?_

 _"Provide plausible deniability in case the New Republic stopped turning a blind eye to Leia Organa’s little militia faction?_  " .... _that was something she'd heard said bitterly in a comm meeting. Sometimes the General got a little loud when she was talking_

 

It had to be that because Kayly  knew enough about the First Order to know that if they attacked they wouldn’t give a rat’s ass who wore a uniform and who didn’t.

 

Despite all rules Mr. Kes Dameron was a combat veteran and the widow of a combat veteran, and the father of a Resistance Commander so that was probably how they snuck it through. Also, Bodhi Rook went and picked him up and flew him back after.

 

She and Ava came out from the Quartermasters one day, where Ava was working double shifts, and saw him climbing out of a speeder with Commander Rook at his side. Ava squealed and ran straight to him, practically leaping into the big mans arms.

“Hola, Kaylyra,” he said and gave her a kiss on the cheek, once Ava was back on the ground.

"Hola señor. Es muy bueno volver a verte,” she said, which made him smile.

 

Later he even had lunch with them in the dining tent.

“Has Commander Dameron come back?” Paave asked, when he saw them there, because some torches are hard to put down.

“Not that I know of,” Mr. Dameron said, “But I do know better than to ask.”

_Black Squadron missions were often face-to-face authorized by Leia Organa herself, seat-of-the-pants operations whose only flight plans existed in the General’s head._

 

“I just wanted a chance to see the place again, and all of you to …you know, say good-bye. Also,” he smiled at Kayly, “I heard word that you’ve been cleared as a pilot and was asked to bring you a little congratulatory gift when that happened.”

 

He laid a small silver card on the table and tapped it.

It flickered for a second then up popped a little holo of the shuttle as it had looked as a shaking wreck right after they landed it… _ok, as he liked to say HE landed it_ ….in that field. A tinny tune played… _she had a feeling BB8 was doing the music off to the side somewhere_ …and a tiny holo of Kayly as she looked in her ID film hovered over it while letters flew around to spell out “If I flew in this piece of junk I can fly ANYTHING!!”

_It was either touchingly personal or the sign of a dangerously immature mind._

_She decided to look into what constituted actionable fraternization in this army just so that , in the unlikely event she ever met Commander Poe Dameron again, she’d know if it was worthwhile asking if she could at least kiss him, and maybe if that passed muster what his interest might be in actual banging. Seemed worth an ask anyway._

 

Mr. Dameron walked around with Bodhi looking at the old temple buildings, it seemed there were certain spots he wanted to visit. Afterwards he went with Paave to walk up some of the forest paths.

 

“Kes and Shara met here,” Bodhi said. “I thinks it’s harder for the other old-timers like him, Joma and me...and the  Princess, of course... Hard to come back and hard to leave."

“Did you tell him we aren’t going with the Fleet, Bodhi?” she asked.

Bodhi said he hadn’t but Mr. Dameron still seemed to know somehow.

 

Before he left he hugged her hard and said, “I’m so glad to have met you Private Andor. Please give my regards to your father, and tell Sergeant “Hallick” that some of Ground Team #3 is still hanging on.”

 

“He should come with us,” Ava said, as he and Bodhi left on the borrowed speeder

“Ava,” Paave said, “we can’t take everybody, it wouldn’t be safe.”

“I know,” Ava said, “but I really wish we could.”

_Kayly squeezed the outside two fingers on her right hand gently for Wish That an Unavoidable Truth Was Otherwise._

 

 

 

  
There were nearly a thousand people in the Resistance Base now, and it seemed likely that many more were waiting to join elsewhere and that ships and heavy equipment were assembling elsewhere already. There were a lot of worries and no little confusion. Some of the newly defecting Republic officers and political people were clearly used to a certain type of command structure, while others expected the more..."collegial"  structure that had been in place so far. 

She was only a Private, it wasn’t as if she expected to be handed the big picture.

_Still, it occurred to her to walk up to Leia Organa sometimes and say, “Ma’am, I know you people worry about security leaks all the time and you totally should because all these people talk like dab-chickens but whoever gives the orders really might to want make sure that the whole team knows Plan A, Plan B and Plan C and which one is in play at all times. Trust me. We don’t have much in the way of communication equipment where I come from and it sometimes involves actual flaming torches. So clarity good, mixed signals and people not knowing who’s doing what why, bad.”_

_She didn't though. This wasn’t Ea that wasn't the way things worked._

  
Many squads had already gone because personnel were being moved off in sections. Kayli ran her hand along the bottom of her trainer X-wing before they moved it out to fly escort for the medical equipment transport going to the new base, stopping to plant a kiss on TwoBean’s casing as they loaded it aboard.

She said goodby to her remaining squad, hugging Bod and Polly as they helmeted up. Rosa and Max had already gone with the first wave out.

_The cover was that she’d been tagged to do escort for the Raddus on the next run._

 

“See you there, Andor,” Polly said with a wink, “Even you can’t lose a ship as big as the Raddus. Smart money says Mila has a craft brewery set up by the time the rest of her squad is even unpacked.”

_What would they tell them? That she was lost? Dead? Re-assigned?_

Waving she watched as they flew up and off, over the jungle and past the lonely Traffic Watch in the crows nest above the temple. Kayly saw the wink-outs as white flashes in the turquoise blue sky.

There was nothing left then but to double back to the main hangar where the fat round-nosed ship that Bodhi Rook had reassembled around the good frame of the Seinar Curich 1. was being loaded into the Raddus for the last time.

 

_At her request they’d used blue reflective casing on most of the exterior. She had a full, if not luxe interior, with seats and a small cargo bay, better engines than her shape would indicate, 3.0 rather than standard 2.0 and, most fun, two small wing guns and a well-concealed cannon bay on top._

 

“We should give her a name,” Bodhi said.

Ava clapped her hands. “Like Guardian!” she said.

“I’ll be glad to see my old friend again,” Bodhi smiled widely. “The Islanders don’t name their boats do they?” he asked Paave.

Paave shook his head.”They do,” he said, “but usually only the builder and the owner know it.”

“You built her,” Ava asked Bodhi, “You should decide a name.”

“I picked for Guardian,” Bodhi told them, “One ship is enough for any man. You should choose for this ship.”

They all stood in silence for a minute.

“How about Esperanza,” Kaylyra said. “It means “Hope.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Ava said, “It goes with the color.”

 

 

Paave slipped off to the forest access path one last time as they finished flight check. He placed a star-shaped yellow flower and two leathery hand shaped leaves into his canvas satchel, to lie alongside the small jar of sand, pebbles and shells he had brought from the coast, then he ran to get back aboard that beautiful Mon Cala ship and rejoin his Heart Companions

 

 

 

The Raddus and her escorts lifted up two hours later.

After Kayly and Bodhi had a last conference with General Organa and Admiral Ackbar, goodbyes were said.

 

 

The Resistance flagship made an unscheduled drop from hyperspace, just long enough for its escort craft to re-arrange pattern. As they did so, a smallish blue shuttle slipped out the flight hanger and held back as the rest of the ships made the jump again. The Esperanza waited then calculated its own series of jumps. The plan was to zig zag toward the Modell System, skirting sections of the Unknown Regions currently under control of the First Order, to try to get within sight and sound of the only lighthouse that could guide them all home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moving toward reunions!


	17. 87

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A forward jump. In the days after the Last Jedi, some of the Resistance's handful of survivors try to grab what resources they can rescue as the First Order consolidates power and it seems like the house of the Republic is burning down around them. On a desperate mission to get some financial access codes a not-untramautized Poe Dameron is separated from his team and meets an old friend only to realize she is even more mysterious than he thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies....trash talk in Spanish is a key plot point here.
> 
>  
> 
> sabroso = “rich” (as in tasty, delicious, high-calorie kind of yummy)
> 
>  No mames = ? (roughly: No fucking way/Fuck no!)
> 
> estúpido bastardo = you stupid bastard,
> 
>  
> 
> Culero = (lit: ass salesman) = asshole
> 
> "¡Me vale madres!” (lit: “I don’t care mothers!”) = I don't give a fuck
> 
>  
> 
> "¿Qué tienes que decir por ti mismo, Jovan?" = What do you have to say for yourself, Jovan?
> 
> Pensé que nunca te volvería a ver = I thought I would never see you again
> 
> Pensé que estabas perdido = I thought you were lost
> 
> Lo siento bebe. Yo también te he extrañado = I'm sorry baby. I've missed you too

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _I was her teacher once, for a little while,_ he thought.

_I taught her how to fly ships that burned to ash in a Fleet that no longer exists._

The bleak expanse that kind of thinking would open up was one he knew he ought to avoid. Yeah.....not good. There was no point in looking there at all. 

_Sorrows when the fight is over..the lady said._

_All right. Maybe this is how it's supposed to go. You teach me now. People living who are supposed to be dead, survival in places that aren't supposed to exist. These are your skies Andor, show me how to fly in them._

 

 

The team had all made it down the stairwells from the lower street level and through the tunnel but there they had run out of time, just as they finally got that garbage-covered hatch open.

 _Ok. Command decision._ The whirr of track and thud of boots had echoed behind, and pretty much without thought he'd shoved C'ai hard ahead of him and closed the crawlway door. There had been a split second where he saw Rose's head turn up, already down inside the unlit passage, and caught sight of the fear in her eyes.

"G-O," he'd mouthed.

_It’s an order. Don’t argue, don't stop. I’ll cover for you._

Bless her, just as he lowered the hatch and the darkness closed around them below he saw her hands reach down to stop BB 8, who'd been rolling ahead of them to light the way through the dark tunnel, stop him from whirling around to dash back to Poe.

_Not a sound buddy, please, not a sound. You stay with Rose. We've talked about this. You're a soldier too, a kick-ass soldier. You'll get them out._

It might, might, be be possible for one man to explain being back in this service alley like this.....to come up something these bastards would buy, but not four people and a droid. There were only 86 of them left. Losing one would be bad, losing four...four plus the finance codes....it was all math now.

He tossed the blaster in…. _this wasn’t something he could shoot his way out of, it would be worse if they found it on him…_..just as he shut the door, quickly lowered it, not letting it drop or clang. He kicked some trash in front of the rusted thing and stepped back with the same movement, hopefully faking a convincing stumble into the garbage bins just as the lights hit him.

A drone floodlight buzzed up over his head and blinded him for an instant.

"Keep your hands in sight." The lead Essos Security guard blared over the crackling broadcast comm. "This area is restricted access."

 

"Hey! I'm sorry!" he said, putting his hands on his head, trying to look panicked. No stretch.

"Officers, I'm sorry ... I got myself turned around..." there were some very expensive bars and clubs on the street levels above... _he didn't look dressed for it but maybe he could convince them he was just a vaped-out patron..._

 

_Oh fuck there were five of them._

Two with full rifles three with stun side arms. He could see the lights of patrol speeders up on the street levels above. CC-3S1 units were rolling in, probably the ones from the facilities security.

 

 _BB8 had been right._ They'd definitely set off an alarm. Rose must have tripped one at the top when she tried the first elevator. _He had to buy time for....._

 

A woman's voice rang down from the walkway above.

"Hold on to him officers! Don't you let him get away!"

 

One of the blue helmets grabbed his arm as he started to lower it and shoved him back. "I said, hands in the air!"

The ones with the real guns kept them pointed at him.

 

"This is just a mistake, officers," he said, hands way up now. "I was only trying to..."

The lead blue helmet, the one with the comm unit, said the words he was dreading, "We need to see your ID."

 

It was a dark service alley two levels below the data plaza, holding nothing but dumpsters, back restaurant loading docks and the one forgotten, unmarked and rusted manual service stairway down to the speeder parking. He only needed keep their attention away from that door.

 _How many minutes had passed?_ he wondered. _Could BB8 have gotten them down into the speeder storage yet? How long would it take?_

 

There was a clicking sound now like high heels stomping across the metal flooring.

“ID?" the pretty young woman in a pink Moro jacket snapped, "Ha! That’s sabroso! He’s going to tell you he doesn't have any! You know why? Because he ran out of there so fast when he saw me he left his fucking coat behind!"

 

She strode forward into the circle of light, fairly shoving aside the two speechless goons with guns and throwing a brown men's jacket at his head. He had to drop his arms to catch it.

"I ought to let them shoot you, you cheating son of a bitch!"

 

_Force forgive him, he hadn't known her, not for almost a whole minute, dark hair braided high, bright pink lipstick and a silver collarbone decal no less. Not until she turned her eyes up so the green of them caught the light and started cussing a blue streak in Festan did it come to him._

_Private Kaylyra Andor, how are you still alive? How are you here?_

 

It was an out of body experience... that was the phrase …. _I saw a man have one of those, right?_

_Yeah, this probably wasn't even remotely the same thing._

 

But still, it was as if he could look down and see himself, standing in a rather foul Kaikielius back alley on the twenty levels down and west from the Praiji financial records data vault. In his hands was a suede jacket he'd never seen before and he was pretty sure he had an expression of stupid shock on his face that matched that of the helmeted Essos Company Security Forces guys around him.

 

A fashionably dressed, beautiful woman was less than a half meter away from him and angrily calling him every name in the book.

 

_Somewhere under under his feet, beneath the concrete and metal flooring four of the other remaining soldiers of the Resistance were hopefully already through the service crawlspace and getting close to some speeder Rose Tico could be hot-wiring at any second. Please._

 

  
The woman elbowed one guard aside and pulled the brown coat half out of his hands again as if making a show of grabbing something from the pocket.

Her fingers touched his briefly and he felt something thin and cold touch on his wrist…. _Force! It was a small vibra-knife or something_ …. she slid it right up his sleeve and he barely had the chance to conceal it. He did catch on fast enough to tug-of-war a little before letting her pull the jacket away from him.

She waved a code cylinder that she seemed to have grabbed from the pocket of the coat, tossing it to the lead Security goon.

“¡Aquí! Oh that’s him! It’s all right here, officers. Jovan Calder, Sullest-born/Corellian resident, 1.78 meters tall, lying bastard and organ donor…which could be very important information very shortly.”

Then she slapped him for good measure. Didn’t pull it, either.

 

_Fucking hell, when they plugged it into the hand reader his picture came up. Andor, what the hell? How are you doing this?_

 

In a scary way what followed was brilliant. Every time the goons asked him a question she answered it, like she had no intention of ever letting him get a word in. Then she’d randomly break into Festian invective the like of which like he hadn’t heard since the last time his dad hit his thumb with a hammer. The droids were probably translating her real-time and passing it up on earpiece for the guards but it was a constant stream of mostly angry slang. Even with decent translation programming they were probably getting multiple possible definitions for each obscenity and ear-splitting headaches to boot..

She showed them “her” ID as well, ranting the whole while. He managed to glean that they were a longtime currently-separated couple. That he’d skipped out on their last two arbitration/counseling sessions. She was high up in Essan Visual Data Tech and Sales and was staying in a company hotel suite on the tenth level of Blue plaza when she got a click notice that some drinks had been ordered on on her expense account. Then she saw him down in the Delphi Lounge having drinks with…

_“Her” expense account, oh Force, in case they searched him…. it would explain why “Jovan Calder” had left no credit trail upstairs and had no cash on him…genius._

 

The guards were exhausted and a little terrified of her. He was a little terrified of her.

  
After 10 minutes, as if the blue helmets hadn’t had enough, another emergency call lit up and crackled over the audio from the drones.

_His heart jumped._

 

It wasn’t from the garage.

Apparently there was an alarm going off on the 47th Level. Three blocks over on the South grid.

_With luck Rose and the others were all the way out by now._

The rendezvous with the Falcon was in 12 hours. All they had to do was get to the transport yard and lay low until then. They would slip out with the Container traffic. With him or without. The plan was still solid.

_He couldn't let them take him to the First Order ship that was orbiting at the platform. He didn't get to kid himself that they couldn't get information out of him. Is that why you gave me the knife Andor?_

 

“Ma’am are you willing to verify this detainee’s identity and sign for custody or do we take him to Detention?”

 

It was close to curfew. Everyone had to be indoors by 01:00. The bars and clubs above all got around closing it seemed, by having indoor loggia connections to the hotels and hostels. There were drinks-all-night specials. He’d seen the signs. Everyone just had to be off the streets and have a registered place of permanent or temporary domicile, no big deal.

_Was that how the thinking was running in places like this now? Like that DJ guy, the one Finn had described._

_“Good guys” and “Bad guys” are just words right? The new boss wasn’t really all that much different than the old boss, right? Wait and see how it all plays out. A few little police state regulations were a minor inconvenience and small price to pay for keeping the banks open and the businesses running. All you had to do was look out for number one, do your business and not ever think about Hosnian Prime. Ever._

_Ok. Keep a grip on it Dameron._

  
“Oh I’ll fucking verify him! He’s not getting away from me that easily. We’ve got unsettled business. You’re going to wish they had arrested you, Culero!”

A CC3-S escort was assigned to escort them both back inside and to a registered accommodation. Another would return at 07:00 to make sure they reported to a Street Command Post for him to pay a fine for trespassing into a Service Droids Only area and her to pay a fine for Disturbing the Peace. “¡Me vale madres! Worth it!” she snapped.

  
She tossed him back the coat. At least one of the blue helmets rolled him a look that might have been pity and then they marched them out behind the droid. “Kestrel Willix’s” boots still clicking on the long metal walkways up to the streets.

Up three levels and into the main ramps to the plaza.

 

 

There was no chance to speak. 

He wasn't 100% sure where they were even  going. The luxury residences were up and three sectors across....most of them, he seemed to remember.

 

Two of the guards and one CC3 rolled with them right into a polished lift with Blue level access.

 

He couldn’t say a word. The droid and the human guards were the very least of it.

Even after the doors on the elevator closed and an the pressurized whoosh stated them up to their ear-popping destination he knew what the tiny blue sparks of light on the ceiling were for.

_Connix had warned them over and over. Above the sewer levels this was one of the most heavily surveilled districts in the Galaxy. The Core Bank and the Nerrian Jewelry Exchange and the Corellian Trade Floor made sure of it. Visual and Audio, heat-scan, energy signature and motion sensors almost everywhere. Probably bio sensors too. Stun alarms._

_BB8 wasn’t here to re-wire anything._

 

Poe Dameron had a knife up his sleeve and no good way to use. it. Not in a confined space like this.

_Was she alone here?_

 

 

  
He finally lifted his eyes from his boots to sneak a glance at the side of his rescuer’s face.

 

All he had were questions and he couldn't ask one, not a fucking one, not here.

_How did you get here Private Andor? What are you doing? Who are you doing it for? How are you still alive?  Is Rook alive? Did you make it back to your home? Did the First Order find it? Is there one safe place still unbloodied in this universe? Is Ava there? Your friend Pavy? Are your parents ok? Did you hear the distress call? Where are you trying to take me?_

 

He couldn't tell her anything either.

_Leia said we had to say you were missing on a hyperspace jump transfer. An equipment failure, not your fault. MIA presumed dead and your friends transferred out to support services off-base. Your squad was crushed. My dad asked about you the last time I saw him, I couldn’t tell him the truth but I said not to count you out. I haven't heard from him since he was evacuated. It was over a shaky comm-link and I could barely hear him. He was so worried about the dog. We were scrambling the squadron. I don't know where they took him. I don't know if he's still alive. The rest of your squad is dead. Polly and Max were in the hanger when…pretty much everyone is dead. You know that. You have to know. The fucking Galaxy knows. Starkiller Base, Hosnian Prime. D’Qar. Everybody’s dead Andor. As far as we know there are only 85 of us left. 86 if you count the wookie. One is an ex-stormtrooper and I  think we have a Jedi too, kind of. Oh she’d like you. We’re desperate. We have to hide. We have to grab everything as fast as we can…get all the stuff that only Leia knows where it’s hidden.....or risk losing it. We put everything in to getting a rallying distress signal out. Nobody came. I fucked up and I have to keep going anyway. I can’t look back. It would break me and I can’t break yet. We’re too few, 86 of us._

 

87.

  
“I know what you’re thinking and don’t even dream about it. No mames!” she, or rather “Kestrel” hissed.

“If you had some little party set up for later they will just have to get started without you. Estos chicos tienen amigos en todos los niveles. Looks like there’s been some kind of robbery so they’re locking up early. Call it court-mandated or call it fate, but you are stuck with me for the next six hours, Jovan.”

  
_Ok. He was getting this now. The alarms were tripped. With the extra security he couldn’t fight his way out. She knew about his team and she was trying to buy time for them. She wanted him to trust her._

  
But they couldn't say anything that two fucked-up self-involved non-coms wouldn’t say and it would all have to mean something different.

_I'm not Intelligence, your dad was Intelligence right? I ran some courier gigs for Leia, dressed up a little and played a wise ass civilian pilot once or twice which truth told was not a stretch for me. Before this the only remotely spy like thing I ever did was try to find a guy on Jakku ...... I got caught…_

 

“Miss Willix.” one of the guards was saying, “This will require an override of hotel security so unless you are sure you are willing to…”

_Oh shit, if the helmets were starting to think this through they might realize…_

"No," She said, "I've got this. Believe me officers."

 

She turned and pushed him back against the elevator wall then  and kissed him. Like she meant it.

Hard and fast, she pressed her mouth against his, half-biting his bottom lip and then pulling back before he could even.... as she moved back she slipped her hand around his waist to place it against his lower back, fingers wide...for an instant. Then she dropped her hand to his and quickly squeezed his fingers as she stepped away.

_Damn._

The security guards were staring, then noticed each other staring, and turned away uncomfortably. The droid, of course, did not give a shit.

 

  
"¿Qué tienes que decir por ti mismo, Jovan?" she said, a little breathless. _Oh hell. This was crazy._

“I still hate you but… Pensé que nunca te volvería a ver,” she said, her eyes absolutely unreadable.

 

 

  
________

 

 

 

 

 

  
They had been sitting in the back yard of the house he grew up in. On the Training runs to the fuel depots he and Rook had brought them all down, Kayly Andor and her friends, to visit Pop.

  
_** ( Dameron, Kes Javon Sgt/Spec/Forces/AotNR/Retired =) Pop is (extrapolating from previous/correlating to sensor/visual/situational evidence =) always happy to see you** _BB8 had said, as Poe unloaded the bags from the speeder.

“Yeah buddy, no question.”

 

It had been a couple of months since he’d been down last and then it had been only for a couple of hours. He’d literally parked the X-wing on the back field. Against the rules didn't even begin to cover it.

 

Leia and Satura wouldn’t have grudged him a chance to check in on his dad during his leave time. It wasn’t like he had to to hide it… _ok, commandeering an X-wing he maybe had to fudge in the logs a little, but he always made sure he did it when he was coming in or going out on another mission so he wasn’t wasting fuel_ ….. It was just that he had family still alive and reachable in the flesh just a one hour slow in-atmo flight away without even breaking security.

How many other people did? Nobody. He never forgot that.

He was glad he brought them with him though. Those poor kids had been wrecked when they first came to the base. To use a less-than-kind term for people who’d never travelled off their own planet before, they were manifestly “homebodies” the lot of them.

That kid with the tattoos was a low-tech ab, or almost one.

_As a Republic Army rookie pilot he’d trained in to fly on disaster evacuations. The stellar eruptions on Devos III, and the comet strikes on Mero. The psych-medics warned them about the signs. People literally died of xenophobic shock or suffered breakdowns and life-long anxiety. The kids from Ea were a brave little bunch though, and they stuck together, but it had to be a mind-fuck._

 

 

 

Andor had recovered quickest, unsuprisingly. Even so, the kid seemed like she was on a mission, always, not just in getting her friends out alive in that unconsciousable piece of junk but in everything she did, the way she flew, the way she fought.

_When he got back to Base after the Chandrilla surveillance run he’d overheard talk in the mess. Ronna had made her his assistant in combat training by the end of her first day._

_“I don’t know where that scrupulously polite 56 kg. murder-fighter came from but if you see another one of those junk-ships out there Dameron, chase it down and get me ten more. Have you seen M’doca lately? She disarmed and dropped him like a rock.”_

 

People got out of her way sometimes when she walked toward the caf dispenser.

Friendly though. He got the feeling she wasn’t quite aware of the effect her intensity had on people sometimes.

 

 

 

Poe had been sitting on the back veranda peeling fruit, as ordered, for the pitchers of Sangria d’ Dameron that Pop had promised everybody before dinner. Ava was helping him.

From where they sat he watched Andor walking across the yard with the thin kid, Paave…Pavy they called him.

He was the one Doc was worried about. Not eating. Jumpy.

She was still very much playing den mother to him. As dumb Loco barreled up barking, with a very nasty chewed-up stick in his mouth, Kayly had put her hand low on the kid’s back.

  
“You don’t need to ask every five minutes,” Pavy laughed “I’m ok. Look, I’m even making friends with the indigenous wildlife.”

He threw the stick and Loco dashed off, delirious.

 

  
“Kayly worries,” Ava clucked, smiling and shaking her head, “She asks me every five minutes too. Somebody should ask her more often.”

“What?”

She cocked her small dark head and popped a bit of peel in her mouth.

 

"Kayly. She just checks with him. Pavy’s father is a Red-Trader so he knows how to communicate the way we do…at home. We are all Heart Companions now so it’s ok to touch him and ask. I’m glad for that. He’s the kind who goes quiet when he’s unwell.”

 

“”I’m sorry, Ava. I don’t understand. I didn’t hear her…” he turned his head, to watch them walk away.

“Wait, I mean, you guys aren’t like…telepaths…are….” _Oh hell, there were supposed to be, have been. telepathic insectoids on Alderaan….and the Jedi were supposed to be...freaky._

“What?” Ava said, golden eyes wide. “Is that a real thing? Oh my! No, no, no. Whoooo…”

She shivered, “That’s a horrible thought. Yuck, yuck, yuck!” Giggling. “No I mean regular communication, like between people who are….ok to touch each other…and give each other signals to…about…”

 

She frowned, frustrated, and taking the towel to wipe juice-sticky hands held them out in front of her and tapped one open hand against the other.

 

“I don’t understand,” Poe said, “I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s ok,"  She seemed so concerned that he not feel criticized. “Don’t feel bad. Many humans have trouble with communication, even at home. Second Sister told me that Jy.... uhh... Kayly's mother took a long time to learn because of her head injuries.  But humans **can** learn. Kayly was raised well and has very good understanding and communication. So does her brother.”

“Here..." she hopped quickly over to his bench, shimmied up next to him and laid the palm of her hand against his lower back, fingers spread wide.

He almost jumped, but she was very matter of fact about it.

 

"That is Inquiring as to Wellness," she said.

_He remembered then how panicked she'd been when Dan and Base Security had made them put their hands on their heads._

Physical contact mattered a lot to these people. He understood that now.

It was considerably less weird than it seemed.

 

“So…You’re asking me how I'm feeling?"

"Yes!"

"How do I answer?"

 

Ava laughed. "That depends on what you want to say."

"I don't know...ticklish maybe." That cracked her up laughing.

 

Then she'd snatched up his hand and stretched out all his fingers. Her palm was far smaller than his, maybe only half as big, dark, leathery and very strong.

"You have hands that aren’t too floppy " Ava said, encouragingly, "like Bodhi Rook, probably because you are a pilot too. I bet you could be understood a little if you tried."

He asked her to show him some basic ones, but it turned out to be super complicated compared to any other sign language he knew. All he remembered now was that pressing the tips of fingers meant "Sorry" but depending on how you did it, it could be sorry for all sorts of things,....cutting in line, bringing bad news, being late, hurting someones feelings, failing at a task. Kissing someone's hand or wrist meant "thank you" for something, except when it meant “please”…..placement and pressure was everything it seemed.

Little Ava had mostly just laughed at him and then squeezed his fingers after, probably to apologize for laughing at him.

It seemed a thousand years ago.

 

 ____

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
Andor was asking him if he was ok, maybe by reflex, and telling him she was sorry.

_It’s ok, Kayly. I don’t blame you. I know the spot we’re in. I just….I’m scared of making a mistake._

 

He didn't know how to answer her.

_This is so fucked._

It was a role-play.

 

It was like the plot of one of those third rate melodrama vids.

_The hospice worker who came when his mom was dying used to watch them. Sometimes he’d watched with her just for something to do, some distraction from what was happening downstairs. They were wildly inappropriate for an eight year old, but she let him. They were so good to him, those ladies, and Geecee-too and the EmBeeThree._

 

_That’s what they were doing right? They were playing a stock scene for these blinkered assholes and a computer analysis system that analyzed human interactions according to a template that had probably been a lowest-bidder project, right?_

_What does the shady guy say to his crazy hot ex after she tried to get him shot and then kisses him in an elevator?_

 

 

 

He took her face in his hands, finger catching just a little on her silver earring, but not quite.

"Lo siento bebe. Yo también te he extrañado.” He kissed her back, pulling her close and trying to put everything he had into it….the loss, the fear, the hunger, the desperation.

It turned out he had quite a bit.  
_Heart rates, right?_

 

“That’s enough, both of you,” one guard snapped.

She held her head against his shoulder and he could feel her shaking a little in his arms, against his collarbone.

Kaylyra Andor. Private in the Air Corps of Army the Resistance….like that mattered, like any of them had rank anymore.

One more person he knew.

Poe couldn't tell if she was fighting back laughing or fighting back tears.

  
_Probably both. Force knew he was._

 

 

There were 87 of them left.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK. A wild time-jump forward, as I have been known to do. I wrote it on my phone in a movie theatre lobby and I'm sticking it here now. This is what I've come to now, that I watched the Last Jedi thinking "Golly!What's the Erso-Andor family doing right now?"
> 
> Long been a fan of the old "kissing while undercover" trope but never thought of writing one until this dawned on me. 
> 
> This isn't nuts, right? We will build around it. It's like "ketching"....as I learned for Indigo,....you just throw the anchor out and pull the boat to it, right? 
> 
> Worked in OtE.


	18. Fates Glimpsed Between Stars.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the days between and just after the events of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, Portia ponders the battles that loom ahead for them all. She worries about Jyn and Cassian and their friends and children, is filled with sorrow at the crimes of her ancient Enemy as it rises again and finds hope in the little things her lighthouse catches sight of out in a galaxy being consumed again in war. 
> 
> Kaylyra begins to form a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Iré con ella. Ella no estará sola = I will go with her. She will not be alone.
> 
> Because I sat through The Last Jedi wondering "I wonder what is going on with.....?"

 

 

 

 

  
Portia watched in agony as the First Order swept forward. Her view of many of their movements was painfully clear because she used their own eyes to see it.

_She had seen the final nature of the weapon, but too late and even if she had been able to make out the whole shape of it sooner, what could they have done?_

A combination of surface sabotage and targeted air attack was the only answer. Leia Organa’s Resistance bravely destroyed the weapon, using Portia's scans augmented with their own close recon to get to it, and destroyed a not-unsizable portion of their Enemies ugly small attack craft, but too late and not enough.

 

  
Portia pitied and respected the General. She was a woman who made the terrible choices when they came, even as she raged over some of them. But Leia Organa too had miscalculated.

_You thought they would come for you first, didn’t you? You were prepared to be the martyr if you could not find your brother to be the rallying figure. Now you must run and save what and who you can._

Instead, they had come first for Hosnian Prime, and the other four worlds in its system. Perhaps as reward for all the old Imperials who had poisoned their progeny with hatred of the “traitors” of the New Republic, the monsters gave them their revenge. The New Republic and its fleet were largely destroyed at a stroke. Millions dead.  Five populated worlds wiped from existence.

 

 

The Darkness did not truly care about tactics, she suspected. Even if destroying the New Republic capitol an hour earlier than everything else had some strategic advantages. The Fury cared only for death and fear, the more the better. As still seemed to be it's pattern it had consumed two organics. The older one was very loud and very odd… _she couldn’t even tell what species it had once been and caught only glimpses of it as it never left it's ship_...... The younger one she had caught looks at several times although she had to be very careful.

It was Leia Organa’s child, or had once been.

There it was again, that cruel drive to prove that it could override even the most powerful biological imperatives…siblings, parents, children.  _Why? What power did it gain from this? It made no sense to her. It never had._

Soon after the weapon was destroyed the older monster appeared to have died. It was hard to tell really, since their minions referred to both of them as “Supreme Leader."   _The sledgehammer wit of calling something an “Emperor” was apparently too subtle for them now_.

She wasn’t sure how that had even happened. Unlike the last time she hadn’t been able to get inside the ship to see what was happening, but there had been survivors, so she would find out details eventually. It hardly mattered to the task at hand. There were changes in pitch but the howling of the Dark paused only briefly then came back just as loud. The young one hadn’t overridden anything. Poor Leia Organa.

 

 

 

  
Jyn and Cassian might have watched the horror of this alone together, just as they had the delayed destruction of Alderaan, but she made sure they would not have to. She shone her light to call as many as possible to her fourth heart level. Bodhi was with them as were Bes and Beri, Ava and many of their friends in Nexa.

Kayly had been in the South at HarborTown and Galen was with her, thank heavens. Portia had called them to the communications station and told them through the scavenged transmitter/receiver and data pads there.

Kayly had screamed and tried to run to Guardian, hidden on the hillside … _as if she would fly off then and there_. Galen had physically held her back and he was probably the only person who could have done it. Her grief was terrible to hear.

The desperate call for help came from Organa and what remained of her Resistance. Portia heard it, of course she did. Their ships were gone, and they were hunted to a handful, trapped and under attack on a distant base.

Ea had only four tiny shuttles. Two of them unarmed.

_Oh. What would you have done Kaylyra? In one little ship what could you do for your friends besides die with them?_

 

 

She hid nothing from any of them, but she would go into some details only if asked.

_Where had they found the tech they used? She could see them so much more clearly now but she still couldn’t fathom how they'd gotten it. They had used dark matter tech and sub-hyperspace tunneling. Badly, awkwardly, clumsily and in ridiculously inadequate containment, but they weren't smart enough to have come up with even rudimentary versions of those technologies in only thirty years. They must have found it somewhere. How? Where? Which of her sibling’s bones had someone scavenged for it?_

 

The Enemy had hacked together a containment system out of a planet they had gutted mining the reactive crystal they prized so for their weapons. The techniques they used were those Jyn’s father had pioneered. She would not tell Jyn this unless she needed to or she was asked. It would have increased Jyn’s suffering and to no effect.

They had only built one, despite multiple attempts. No one had ever been able to replicate the same conditions. They copied but they did not understand the things they were copying.

 

  
_Oh, poor Resistance. You learned to fight wars with armies and fleets, but none of those can help you now. You will have to fight without them. Do you remember how? There are other ways._

_Did you ever find your brother?_

 

Leia Organa had given Cassian orders, maybe the last orders he would ever receive, and she knew he meant to follow them as did Jyn and Bodhi.

But it was Kaylyra, who flew back with her brother in Guardian the very next day, who came to them with tears dried, and proposed a truly desperate and dangerous plan.

Cassian’s pain as he listened to her outline it, clear-eyed and determined, was difficult to watch. In some ways it was worse than when Galen had taken his rifle and gone to lead the team on the grasslands.  He had argued with her, not shouting but very close to it. Jyn had interceded then, although Portia knew that her cortisol levels were also very high.

When he walked out of her second heart level and down the steps to the field, to, as Jyn said “cool off” while she talked to Kayly, Portia had felt obliged to speak with him.

It was a family matter as well as an Alliance one, but Portia felt she must weigh in as an ally, a fellow soldier and a friend. Kayly’s plan was not unlike one of Jyn’s intuitive leaps but she had some solid points of strategy, if they could be modified to….slightly….decrease risk.

“Iré con ella,” she told him, knowing he would hear her in his mother’s voice but unable to remedy that, “Ella no estará sola.”

 

 

 

Over those first days she would see many things that she would hold onto in her memory until asked for them.

  
Around the destroyed weapon, in the shattered remains of the system it had mostly destroyed, the spilled fuel from the star it had half consumed was forming into a small star of its own. Someday it would join as a binary with it’s crippled parent. The debris would eventually coalesce as a ring around it. _Someone should tell the young pilot who had fired the shot. How many people got to make a star?_

 

The First Order swarmed Chandrilla in a lightning attack. It was one of the Core Worlds they had clearly pre-targeted. Their fleet numbers had been badly affected by the destruction of the Star Killer base/weapon but their superiority in speed and sheer firepower remained almost unstoppable. They were engaged in battle with the tiny and proud Chandrillan Security Forces which would be over in a matter of hours. A tall young woman with gleaming bronze hair walked through a tasteful single-level house filled with flowers and plants, systematically shutting down and burning out all the internal computers and data storage systems. Before she shut down the last of these, and thus vanished from Portia’s sight, she took from a box on a mantelpiece a long, serpentine-linked silver chain. She slipped it over her neck and hid it under the workers cover-all she was wearing.

She was clearly attempting to escape the city in disguise. Clarissa Rayma, the granddaughter of the late Mon Mothma, former Chancellor and First Senator of the New Republic, was a published civil-rights lawyer. It seemed highly unlikely that she was actually working in sanitation services.

 

 

The Mon Calmari would have answered the call, but First Order war ships had appeared from unmarked hyperspace corridors to blockade their planet before the dust of the Star Killing weapon had even finished expanding. They did not try to land but placed a nearly…. _nearly_ …. complete fence around Mon Cala Prime and her base moons.

From satellites Portia saw how most of the population remained in their beautiful underwater cities to prepare. When word reached them of Admiral Ackbar’s death the whole population wore yellow ribbons and sashes to show their grief and sang songs of mourning in unison. She also saw, only because she accessed an old Bothan IV satellite that the First Order would have dismissed as junk, the hundreds of young Mon Calmari arriving at deepwater stations being quietly transported to tiny cloaked escape pods and short range craft. She already knew how for years the Mon Cala branch of the Resistance  had been quietly hiding ships in the asteroid fields of an adjoining system. It would take time, maybe even months, to slowly move enough of their people out, in twos and threes, to reach and get those graceful ships operational but they would do it. Admiral Raddus alone had three hundred great-grandchildren. 

 

  
She saw a man named Lee Berman ( _Sargent, AotAtRtR, Pathfinders Spec. Forces, retired, multiple field commendations_ ) walk into a rented storage facility on Dantoinne and claim a number of locked bags and boxes that he had kept in storage there for a long time. She looked back to find the visual record of his first dropping them off almost twenty years previously and saw that they contained a number of decommissioned rifles. One with a very well-designed sniper configuration attachment of a kind she knew Cassian to favor. As the older man left with the bags, she made sure to refile the records so as to make them almost impossible to retrieve.

 

On Qemia 7, a man who worked in the Public Safety/Emergency Services dispatch unit watched the reports from a full access data terminal at his desk. He must have understood at once that his brother and sister-in-law had died in their home on Hosnian Prime. The man then took a public car to his mother’s house, where he remained for a short time before leaving with a small rucksack. Doren Tonc managed to get to the spaceport in the last panicked hours before they shut it down. Inside, after abandoning the borrowed vehicle, he accessed the monitors looking for and eventually, with what little help she could give him, finding an orphaned Mon Calmari ship scheduled to depart on a disguised manifest before it could be seized. She did not doubt that he did this because he knew that whatever happened they would help him to find a way to go and fight.

A handful of very young amateur pilots, most of them farmer’s sons and daughters who’d only flown crop-dusting craft, or workers in the beachfront resorts with experience on planetary taxi speeders, took the controls of quickly commandeered commercial tourist shuttles. They volunteered to supplement the inadequate Emergency teams and help evacuate the civilian population on Yavin IV.

Inside one garishly decorated craft a strong and fit older gentleman helped many others aboard before squeezing in himself, all while wiping tears from his eyes. Just as the hatch closed, the dappled grey canine he had left outside the parking lot landing strip climbed the fence and ran to jump through the doors and into his arms. The other passengers helped him pull the dog inside. The man held the animal on his lap and, because she had a brief but clear opening to do so through the commercial navigation program the liquor company that owned the ship had installed, Portia was able to carefully increase the fuel efficiency of the tiny "party" shuttle to compensate for the extra weight. _The boy piloting would probably have figured out how to do so on his own, but it didn’t hurt._ As the ships pulled away to some place …. _probably Lah’mu but they had cleverly not filed flight plans_ ….any place that was not a likely target of the First Order’s treasured vendetta against the former Alliance.

Before she lost sight of the little security camera inside the crowded shuttle she saw the man let some of the frightened children aboard hold the dog, which was kind because it no doubt decreased their anxiety. As he sat the man took a battered locket on a chain out from the inside of his shirt and held it, praying quietly in Festan for the safety of his son.

 

On Pendarr, a First Order Strike team would quickly overwhelm the small local security force and an unaccountably large and well-armed team would be sent out to the rural address of an elderly couple who had both been marked by their receipt of modest New Republic veterans’ pensions. When the black-clad unit and their camera drones entered the pretty white farm house they found only a powered-down household droid with its personality and memory cards removed for off-site storage. A portion of the team investigating the second floor discovered what appeared to be the covered forms of two persons lying in an upstairs bedroom. Heat signatures seemed to indicate the slow interior cooling of recently deceased humans.

The majority of the First Order personnel had been inside the house and the remainder close by in the gardens and terraced front walkways at the moment when one of troopers stepped close to the bed, pulling back the blanket to find that the “bodies” were only rolled foam pillows with hot water flasks wrapped inside, and tripped the trigger. The old ancestral Draven house and much of the surrounding hillside had been packed with scan-shielded explosives. The entire 16-man attack team was incinerated.

Portia had gained only fleeting access but infra-red tracking images from the previous day had revealed two very elderly humans, each with rifles, walking slowly and with some difficulty up into the hills several kilometers from the house. They stopped to rest frequently and the taller one was clearly helping the shorter, but both kept moving steadily. All she could do for them was to burn out the cameras she had seen them with…. _set up by a U.of P. Biological Study class to track the movements of a rare species of hill-ferret that only lived in the wilderness areas of Pendarr_ …. and make sure that the personality files of their old droid stayed safe and secure.

 

Sometimes it is the little battles that matter, those are the ones that keep hope alive. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because, yeah, Draven and Thorn are going down swinging.
> 
> Trying to link up....around, events of LJ. Which, curiously had many spots available. Looked at through a Rogue One sensibility that film, which I mightily enjoyed, is pretty dark tho. Oh my. Sat through the whole film thinking "Portia will have something to say about THAT, oh my!" Which is a sure sign of how crazy I've gotten over these characters.


	19. Skylar Tower/Blue Level - Essos Corporate Suite #6.391

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two stressed soldiers of the shattered Resistance/New Rebellion are stuck in a steamy hotel bathroom. 
> 
> Kaylyra Andor, with some help, finds that she may now BE all that is left of Rebel Intelligence and rightly finds this suggestion terrifying.
> 
> She remembers how she heard about the First Order attack and the destruction of the New Republic and most of the Resistance, and recalls incidents that give her some insight into Poe Dameron's actions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Hueles igual a basura de la tienda de fideos” = "You smell like garbage from the noodle shop."

 

 

 

 

  
_Oh Dameron. I'm so fucking sorry._

 

"Do everyone a favor and just stay put without further disruption, Ms. Willix," the Security guard was saying as Kayly turned her face toward the suite door for the retinal scan that opened it.  

_This should be free sample day at the cake booth for Portia, since she was already roaming around in the hotel systems._

_* Willix, Kestral Therese. Confirm: Essan Visual Data Tech-Level 2-Exectutive class points* The doors opened._

 

"A droid escort will arrive at 07:00 and accompany you to the Command Center."

 

[“Mention your employer's legal representative," Portia said, "This planet has been entirely ruled by a commercial consortium for the last fifty years. They wield enormous power.”]

"Fine!" she said, "but I'm contacting my company rep. to meet us there, so this report better damn sure it make it clear I did nothing wrong."

_Was it her imagination or did one of the guards give her a look then? Pity? Contempt? ....as if she thought her ignorant, or just naive._

 

"That's your right Ms. Willix," the lead officer said. He flashed Dameron a warning look, "just make sure you are both there.”

_Are you worried Essos Security Officer Tolland? You should be. Your consortium is trying to cut a deal with the First Order as we speak. There’s a lot of tax-free no-ask, hard-to-trace cash here. Your planet always marketed itself as a shelter for commercial data not copied anywhere else so the FO won’t jackboot in or firebomb unless they decide they really have to. For now they want your records, undamaged if possible. Do you know there's an FO destroyer envoy up there in far orbit? Your “Commercial Council” does. The top one hundred vendors are already making arrangements for handing over data on New Republic citizens to buy themselves “independence.” You’ll need to decide where you stand cousins, because pretending you can sit this out will not be an option._

 

She flashed them a smile as the suite door opened and she pushed Dameron’s shoulder. "Come on Javon, let’s negotiate.”

_She despised this transport-wreck character she was playing but at least she got to be sarcastic and bitter._

 

To his absolute credit Dameron managed a convincingly sardonic smile of his own, “See you in the morning guys.”

  
[“Cameras in the front rooms and limited bio-sensors and audio everywhere else but no audio or visual in the organic personnel sanitation areas. Oh my these people watch each other a lot...that seems stressful.”]

_No fucking joke, Portia._

The bio sensors at this level were pretty basic stuff, from what Portia had told her earlier. They knew what they wanted to know, and the hotel was really only interested in recording how many still-breathing bodies were in each room and in what general proximity for billing purposes. All data was still sent into secured internal feeds. This was such a heavily surveilled planet that these hotels marketed “our eyes only” systems, so their clients could feel safe from blackmail if not from computerized voyeurism.

[“Keep your friend calm, but not too calm since we are trying to mimic an emotionally and hormonally fraught situation here. You are both doing quite well by the way. Try to move him into one of the less surveilled areas. I’m going to experiment with some sensor schematics.]

_Ok. Fine. I love you but I hate you sometimes Portia. Please just find me a way I can talk to this man._

 

As the door closed she’d pushed close again and laid two fingers to his lips before he could slip up and speak.

“Oh hell no boyfriend, first things first,” she said, "Hueles igual a basura de la tienda de fideos. We're going in that fresher right now and negotiate after.”

 

_Dameron. I'm so sorry._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

\---- 

She hadn’t even been at home when it happened. They’d both gone down to HarborTown, she and Galen, to stay with Tom Markey and have a working meeting with old friends. After a week with Tom and Thea, meeting with the Ladies and the new apple-cheeked Youngest who wore her brown hair in long childish braids and ran barefoot over the shell-strewn beach to meet Kayly, saying, "I have heard so much about you," her brother had taken her out in his so-sweet new boat, to Hand for a couple of days to see Paave.

His father, a thin weathered man in Trader's red had come to meet them on the public docks directly when they landed, rushing to embrace Kayly at once. Only blood family were usually so treated.

Pavy smiled wide and lifted her bodily from the ground when he hugged her.

“Oh you crazy runt!" she'd laughed, "You're like six cm. taller! How do you even DO that?"

He'd put on weight and gotten a new tattoo as well. It was all sharp-edged stars in blue-black that traced up and around his left arm and up to the back of his shoulder where they faded into a stylized design in pale blue that she recognized after she’d looked at it for a minute. It was one of the curved blue shells he’d taken home from the beach on Yavin IV.

_Kayly had come there to see him, to lay eyes and hands on him and to know he was alright, but she was also there to hear his report._

Galen left after handshakes, a good meal and a quick visit. He needed, he said, to go off for some unspecified business at Blue in his little boat, but promised to be back in two days.

 

_“Business?” Paave had asked._

_“Oh yeah,” Kayly told him, “I hear that’s what the kids are calling it now.”_

 

  
“Did they let you come ashore?” she asked, licking the sticky sweet-root off her fingers and tossing the toasting stick back in the fire they’d lit down by the shore that first night.

Pavy shook his head. “No, but I didn’t expect that, the big achievement was that they didn’t shoot me."

_He smiled and his tone was light, but she knew how much courage it must have taken.....to go back to the Far Islands and talk to them about what he'd seen._

“They came and listened. In their boats from fifty meters away, of course, but there were at least a hundred there. The Bequa who brought me promised to talk to some of their human partners individually later. I know that doesn't sound like much direct to show for it but tell your father, it's a start.”

He tossed some charred peel into the fire and they watched it burn together.

 

Paave’s father spoke to Kayly privately the next morning, when they were alone by the boats.

“Did he tell you how they all had arrows drawn on him while he spoke? Even Nuala’s father. His own grandfather. “ Anilta had shaken his head, “To go as far as he has gone and then have to face death at the hands of your own kin. They forget their own sayings, some of the traditional people. Queen Pele-aa's last words in the old song. “Fear of the Darkness can save us from death but without trust in the Light we will not live.”

When Galen returned from his “business” she’d kissed Pavy goodbye and they’d sailed back in to Harbortown.

 

Conn had had no fewer than nine mugs of beer lined up on the railing of the communications station porch and they'd been looking forward to a quiet evening looking at the sunset.

Mary Markey had been sitting inside on watch and chatting companionably out the door of the converted cold storage room with an eye on the feeds. Suddenly she yelled, ”Galen! Portia says come right now!"

They'd all crowded around the little monitor and the sole data pad, silent and afraid.

 

The First Order attack had begun. Either Portia’s assessments had been wrong or something had spooked them and they were moving it into place before it was stablized, But they weren’t attacking D’Qar. They went for the New Republic first.

Because of the nature of the weapon… _Portia made it sound like it punched temporary hyperspace “holes” and just dumped energized dark matter through them…_. there had been an actual freak visual effect observable across a huge slice of space, even in places far distant from the Galactic Core. Depending on eye structure some people saw it as a slow red line. Others as a dark purple one lasting for several seconds. Terror was widespread because residents of hundreds of worlds saw it in their skies and thought they were the ones under attack.

_Of course.The bastards had probably been willing to pay extra for that._

 

Over the edge as far as Ea was no one had been able to see it except Portia, although Second Lady Olwen said that some of the Bequa were reporting that they “heard” a sound like something tearing a great cloth and had been badly shaken.

The entire Hosnian System was gone in a moment. The star was crippled and all five of her worlds destroyed. Yet if you looked at the stars from Ea now you would still see HC15, would still see it for thousands of years.

_It was the kind of thing that would make you crazy if you let it. The only one of them who might be around to see that little flash of death when it finally reached their skies was Portia._

 

Within minutes Portia spoke again, telling them the weapon was destroyed, that the Resistance pilots had hit the unstable containment field before the Enemy could fire it again at the base on D’Qar,

“Which ones?” Kayly asked, but Portia didn’t have that kind of detail in the play-by-play she was pulling from the commercial satellites she was augmenting from far-off Naboo to try to see what was happening.

_It didn’t matter. She’d known it must be Black Squadron. There was no one else they’d send._

 

The Star Killer, the weapon the murdering bastards had spent decades building was gone in a heartbeat, but so was the New Republic and it’s Fleet. There would be minutes, at best hours, before the remaining First Order Armada, all need for secrecy gone, would come pouring out of the Unknown Regions and bearing down on the Resistance.

Mama came on the audio, voice tight. She told them to stay put. She also said that Ava was with them.

_Good. Ava shouldn’t be alone right now._

It was sunny outside and the shorebirds were calling. She could hear the bells chiming out on the new docks. The fishing boats were coming back in. They could do nothing but wait.

Kayly looked down to find herself clutching the armrests with white knuckles. Galen’s hands were on her shoulders for minutes before she even felt the weight of them.

“What can I do?” her brother asked but she could only shake her head.

“Do you know these people, Kayly?” Dora whispered.

“Yes,” she said, “I know all of them.” She felt so sick.

_I’m a Resistance pilot cleared for fighter deployment. I trained for this and I’m not there._

 

Hours later Portia spoke over the audio feeds in her "business voice".... _a long lost friend of hers named Jula, usually_... “I am getting a distress signal, on open broadcast, primarily aimed at the Outer Rim. I can hear it via a relay on Tatooine….the code is Leia Organa’s own…. they are trapped on an Outer Rim world….Crait….oh, what was she thinking?”

“The Resistance Fleet?” That was Galen. Kayly found she couldn’t breathe.

“No. Them. Her, Leia Organa. There must be very few of them alive. Their Fleet is gone. They have no ships left and are cornered and under attack. They are calling all allies for help….saying this is….” Portia fell silent.

_The last stand._

 

Guardian was under cover up on the bluffs. She didn’t even make it to the the stairways cut into the dunes at the edge of the Fishers Lane before Galen caught her. His legs had gotten very long. She was pretty sure she’d been screaming.

 

\----- 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
[“Yes. That should work. Anything you can do to muffle sound from inside is good too.”]

_Come on Dameron, I know this is crazy but don’t freak out on me now, just a few more meters…._

  
He blinked but nodded and moved where she pushed him, across the carpeted room to the frosted glass doors at the tastefully muralled back wall.

As soon as they got inside the lighting increased and she found they were in a gleaming cream alabaster-lined fresher with a copper covered wall mirrors, two different kinds of showers, one sonic and one water, and a gleaming blue glass tub big enough to wash a Taun in.

 _Wow!_ _Last night she’d been in a housekeeping staff suite and that had seemed luxurious._

The lighting automatically went up and as the sliding glass closed behind them, she cued the hot water spray in the shower from the hand pad at the door.

“Are we alone?” she said.

“Que?” Dameron asked, not knowing who she was talking to.

He’d turned to face her but stayed very close. He knew what they were up against here. Kayly had realized that when he’d kissed her back in the elevator.

[“That’s a good level. You’re safe to talk. There is no audio monitoring here.” Portia said. “Please tell him his companions escaped. They overrode the locks on a civilian speeder and are now outside the Security search range. At least one of Resistance soldiers seemed to be quite capable with tools and the small mechanical has some really handy and wildly unorthodox technical modifications, also a very dry wit. It accessed a speeder lift and I was able to let it know then that this officer is alive. The little thing was quite touchingly pleased.”]

_Yeah, I knew you’d like him, he’s a charmer._

“We can talk here. Your team got out,” she said, then added because she knew it mattered so much, “BB8 is ok.”

Dameron closed his eyes and exhaled. Her hand was still on his shoulder and she felt him sag against the cream-colored marble counter with relief.

_He was thinner than she remembered. She’d realized that when she’d put her arms around him in the lift. There were lines under his eyes and not the kind you got from staring through the stars._

  
“Andor,”” he said, quiet but desperate, matching her volume level, “How did you get here?”

[“Did Leia Organa survive?”]

“Is the General still alive?”

“Andor, what the fuck are you doing here?”

“The same as you. Accessing data, destroying records.”

_There was something different in his eyes then, something that pulled back. It wasn’t suspicion but it wasn’t trust. Caution._

 

“For who?” he said.

 

Stupidly she felt a flash of anger.

_The fuck Dameron? You think I’ve sold out somehow?_

 

But she swallowed it back.

 _No. Of course that wasn’t it. He couldn't help it. This Poe Dameron_ _wasn’t the generous and dashingly confident ace in an X-wing anymore, the mercurial Black Squadron Leader who never missed._

He was Command Leadership now.

 

  
——

 

  
In the mess tent, on Yavin IV they'd been sitting on those narrow metal benches eating the wafer thin crisps of carbohydrate that passed for bread and drinking tea on morning before assignments. Max, and Ava's Bothan friend had been sitting with them when Paave came and joined them with a wide smile. He was carrying a hatful of the same orange-gold fruit that Commander Dameron had shared with them weeks before. They were smaller than the ones on Mr. Dameron’s farm, Paave had found them growing wild on a trail by the back cargo landing strip…. but no sooner did Pavy's treasure make its appearance than their table suddenly became very crowded. Fresh fruit could make you almost more popular on a hot day at Resistance Base than free liquor. 

"Were did you learn to peel them like that," y'Naar asked Ava as they sliced the treats up and passed them around as far as they'd go, "The last time I got one of these it made me so frustrated I just bit right through and almost choked on the seed."

Ava explained, which got a conversation going about Dameron, which led to a conversation about Black Squadron in general. 

Everybody knew about Poe Dameron’s elite hand-picked flight unit. They answered to the General only it seemed and were constantly out on covert actions and recon behind Remnant and First Order lines. Kayly’s squad, and the two other teams of flight cadets, were training up for the fight that lay ahead but Black Squadron was seeing action now. Even if no one was supposed to talk about it you can't exactly disguise having been in a firefight from the people who have to clean the carbon scoring off your cannon array and that was y'Naar, five times out of ten.

"All those ace pilots are fussy," the Bothan said. “Joma stands and watches you the whole time with her arms crossed, but Dameron is far and away the worst."

"What do you mean?" Paave was keen to leap to his idol's defense.

"Oh, he's a pleasant fellow off the landing strip," y'Naar said, rolling a golden eye, "but he rebuilt and amped up that custom X-wing AND that BB-8 himself, you know. Look like you're going to possibly, maybe, put a scratch on either one and you see the rough side of that flyboy pretty quick. If he could flight crew and repair himself I think he would. The General is going to have to drag him kicking and screaming into Command."

"Why would she do that?" Ava said, alarmed at the image, "he's a good person who loves the General and would go anywhere she asked him to."

"It's an expression, Ava," Max said. "It means to insist that someone do something they really don't want to do." 

"She wants him to train up for a Command Leadership position and deep down he just wants to fight and fly,” Korrigan, one of the communications techs, said, licking fruit juice off her fingers. “Everybody knows that.”

Bodhi Rook had come up from the serving line and placed his tray beside Pavy's. “Some of us don’t get to be what we were supposed to be,” he said, ”Sometimes we have to be what the task requires we become.....or so someone once told me."

 

  
——

 

 

 

 

 

“I’m doing it for you Dameron,” _Fucking hell, she needed him to believe her,_ “I’m doing it for all of us, for the Rebellion. I’m still in the Army of the Resistance. You need to tell the General that, tell her Lighthouse is still operational.”

_Hadn’t Leia Organa told him? Why not?_

 

“Andor…Kayly…” he said. He looked at her then and breathed like someone breathes when they’re about to do something they know is going to hurt them very much.

  
“You know…..you have to know…..” _Go ahead Poe, say it._ “We lost everybody….everything. Your squadron….mine…They all died. We got a signal out but nobody came….The General was still ok when I left her but…there are are only 86 of us left.”

_“I know” and “ I’m sorry” would have tasted like ashes._

“No,” she said, “There’s more. I don’t know how many but there’s more.”

_There was so much to say and for a long precious minute if seemed like neither of them were able to say anything._

 

He nodded silently and looked around at the white, blue and copper room, whose shiny fixtures and mirrors were rapidly misting up.  “Well. On the bright side, this is hands-down the fanciest fresher I’ve ever been in.” A smile flashed then and for a second she thought she saw the handsome, funny, kick-ass flyboy that half the Base had a group crush on again.

It didn’t last long though and it left his eyes first.

"I know, me too. It's ridiculous, right? And this is just business class."

_She managed a small laugh that she knew probably didn't reach her eyes either._

  
"Andor," he said, “If you’re doing what I think you’re doing, right now you might BE Rebel Intelligence."

  
["Depending on his definitions, he's not exactly wrong."]

  
Kayly found that without thinking she had reached for Dameron's hand again, slipping her fingers around to tap lightly before she pressed harder.

He held on before she could pull her fingers away embarrassed, and looked down at their joined hands. “What does that mean?” he asked.

_So he had talked to Ava._

“It means “Companionship in Time of Great Trouble,” she told him, “Also," she pressed his two outside fingers little more than the others, "Theres a shade of “Listen, I know we are so screwed but I’m here to do what I can”…sort of implied.”

That ghost of a smile again, dimmer this time, still looking at their hands. “Where you’re from must be such an interesting place.”

  
[“If both of you can stay in there for a little while longer I have something I can sync for an overlay that should let you talk and move around in the other rooms. This may require a little choreography in order to create a loop for the bio-sensors though. We still need to maintain your cover and match our window for the data download at 0500. What level of personal rapport do you have with this officer?”]

_Oh hell. It was 2300 now, roughly. Six hours to set this up, fool the scans and share what information each of them dared. A few hours after that to get him back safely to his team._

It was getting stupidly humid in here too. All the mirrors and chrome were fogging up, and she was pretty sure this eye make-up was melting. His shirt was getting soaked.

"Listen," she said, "We are safe for a while here and I know this is insane but I need you to trust me some more."

_Bodhi was right, nothing…but nothing…. gets to be the way it’s supposed to be Dameron._

She took a breath and laid a slightly damp hand on his shoulder.

"I don’t know you anywhere near as well as I should to be asking this Poe, but I need you to search your heart and be honest, how convincingly do you think you could make out with me for say….the next two hours?

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do I know what I am doing? No I do not. I think I had originally thought to make Kayly and Poe a sort of "might have been", in part because Poe is such a difficult character to actually pin down in the films....well-acted, fun, wonderful, brave, good, attractive all across the rainbow and as pretty as Oscar Isaacs handsome jaw and big brown eyes can make him....but hard to pin down. Then I came worked my way around Kes, and his relationship with his son, and the kids from Ea, and Kayly and Portia as an unbeatable secret spy team....I thought, maybe something is worth exploring here.... This is fan fiction right? I can make this work.
> 
> Apologies for all the Dickensian cliff-hangers and short chapters. For some reason this is the way my brain works.
> 
> It will all come together in the end.


	20. Shelter from the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kayly Andor considers her mission and the events that brought her to Kaikielius.
> 
> Despite biting regret for the way things might have been and the people they have had to become she and her old friend Poe Dameron they find what shelter they can with each other, for a little while.
> 
> Poe gets clever idea.

 

 

  
Kayly had not come here to rescue anybody. She had not even been 100% sure there could be anyone still alive to rescue. She had come here to sabotage the First Order, to destroy financial and transactional records and set loose a virus of Mama and Portia’s design that would let other people hide, conceal identities and resources, and escape routes to the Outer Rim. It had to be by done by hand here, on this famously neutral and internally policed data-haven, and at a few other key points, and it had to be done in such a way as to leave no trail directly or indirectly back to Ea. That was the mission she'd set herself.

 

Mama and Papa and Bodhi had their orders. Revive and maintain Lighthouse by any means necessary.

 

Portia stopped answering her questions after the first few days.

_“I will tell you when I have any kind of clue, Kaylyra, grasping at empty spaces in the data and painfully speculating on what they mean is unlikely to help your mental state. Believe me. I know.”_

 

The only thing Portia did do was ask Bodhi Rook to tell her everything he could remember about the infamous Millennium Falcon, supposedly lost a decade ago. Specifically she wanted to know about it’s specs and power signatures. _Something had caught her eye._

Even if the Falcon still flew she might be flying without her pilot. The equally infamous Han Solo was reported to have died in the attack on the the Starkiller weapon. Portia had intercepted a brief news blast to that effect on a Corellian independent station. It’s origin was uncertain and it was swallowed up in the chaos before and after, but Portia was good at finding the needles in grass stacks. It was all needles to her.

_Portia told Bodhi, who had barely left the tower since the attack, how she had nudged a few nav-beacons after glimpsing a flight shadow, just thrown a little dust. Maybe it was only covering the trail of some nameless smuggler in a different amped-up junker, but it might help._

 

Kaylyra, on the other hand, had no assigned mission. She was a soldier of the Resistance....which might be nothing now but a memory, or a few hundred survivors or Leia Organa alone....had gone dark after their last cry. She determined to find a way to help whatever remained. 

It was Portia who had marked the data-cartel systems of Kaikielius as a target to strike fast. The First Order would have to at least try to “negotiate” there, since their data records were more valuable than any real estate.

“They have an enormous number of those vicious ugly ships,” the black-haired child she’d been projecting had said, with an almost grim smile, “but it is still a big galaxy. They can’t be everywhere.”

 

Portia had set her up a low-security off-planet guest-worker cover with relative ease. After that it had only taken a link slipped into an Essos system by an “ambiance contracter”..aka cleaning service worker.

The getting and changing of clothes and trip to a "beauty" spa, was strange stuff indeed.

Kayly/Kestral had actually been moving away from the Visual Systems Plaza, where she’d tucked several corrupting viral time-bombs in the junctures, toward the Financials Secure Storage…. _to “case the place” as Mama said_ …when she’d spotted a round orange and white BB astromech rolling on across a connecting bridgeway several levels below her.

_Her breath caught in her throat. At the exact same instant, Portia said “You need to get out and down to the Commercial level. Somebody has set off an alarm in one of the Financial Towers.”_

 

_Where would they go? How would they try to get out? Somebody’s alive. BB8. Dameron?_

 

Portia combed building and infrastructure schematics while Kayly tried to run in those fucking boots. She hadn’t dared to hope until she’d seen the Security drones gathering. They'd spotted unauthorized movement in a service alley. As she'd looked down over the street rail she’d seen him turn, blinded by the flashlights. As she did some part of her heart seemed to come back online.

 

She’d grabbed man’s tan jacket jacket out of the back of an valet-parked speeder on impulse and made up the plan as she ran. 

"Dameron, Poe,  Graduate ANR Flight Academy, pull his old files to use,” she gasped, “Desperate Encounters.”

[“What are you talking about?” Portia had said.]

“Popular Entertainments of the Mid-Rim,” she’d whispered, breathless.... _she'd have to make it look like_ anger... “I’m the high-powered wife, he’s the ex-husband, set it up. Go!”

 

 

 

 

 

  
_Was it the best plan? No, mames. Definitely not._

Her only idea had been to get him out of that alley, away from those cops and up here, to this temporary safe space that Portia had boxed in.

  
She went in on Kestrel Willix auto-pilot. Portia worked her magic and those famous Black Squadron nerves hadn’t failed him. Poe held it together and let her run the scene. 

  
What had shaken her most, made her most afraid of falling, once the elevator doors had closed, was how gut-flippingly glad she was to see him.

Somebody had gotten out. Against all odds.

I _t had been weird and scary in places but she’d gotten them here. Now what?_

 

  
She hadn’t even known him well, not really. Homesick and hormonal that's what she had been in those days when she and half of Resistance Base were crushing on him. Now what she remembered most were the times she had seen a person under the hotshot ace pilot, the decent, open-hearted guy who'd taken off his officers flight jacket to sit on the ground to show Pavy how to peel fruit, who'd taken her to see her parent’s names carved on a pillar of stone, laughed at the astromech's jokes, played “Go Fish” with Ava and let his dad hug him like he was six.

That was the guy she remembered actually thinking about getting Active with and that guy, if memory served, seemed like he might just might not have said no if better times ever came.

Instead hell came crashing down.

 

 

 

  
Looking back hurt and it was way past pointless, but a bitter thought had slipped in when she’d kissed him in the elevator…or “Kestrel” had.

_This isn’t the way it was supposed to be, Dameron._

Had he thought that when he kissed her back?

  
——-

 

 

It was the kind of thing you had to put out matter-of-factory or not at all, she figured. 

_Her question had been “I don’t know you anywhere near as well as I should to be asking this Poe, but I need you to search your heart and be honest with yourself, how convincingly do you think you could make out with me for say….the next two hours?"_

 

The damn room was getting stupidly foggy with steam. The hot water had maybe been a bad idea.

 

 

“I'll give it my best shot” he nodded, face absolutely straight now, “but I’ve had a rough day. I think 1.45 hours is gonna be the outside of what I can manage.”

  
It took her a full second.

Then she burst out laughing. He slid his arms around her back and she put her head on his shoulder again. The black sleeveless dress was soaked through now and they were both shaking with laughter.

“Culero,” she said, coughing.

_He was still Poe Dameron, battered, scared maybe…but still reflexively popping everybody’s balloons._

_For some reason this made her happier than anything else she could possibly imagine._

 

 

But as the laughter trailed away she could still feel his heart beating very hard against the palm she'd rested on his chest.

  
“Kayly, seriously, you know I don’t understand any of this,” he said, quietly, like a man admitting defeat. “Straight up. You are going to have to tell me what’s real and what’s fake, and how much there needs to be of each because I am lost here.”

  _He was trusting her faster than she'd trusted him when they first met. That's the kind of guy he still was._

 

 

  
“No, listen,” she said, _because it had just come to her._ “I’ll tell you what’s real. Where I grew up there are these small shelters, just big enough for a handful of humans, or couple of Taun to lie down in, called “Rescue Places.” Mostly they set them up on the Coast in storm-prone areas far from the settlements, or on long stretches of trail up in the North or on the grasslands. They’re usually just little huts, or log houses with firewood, with basic medicine and maybe some containers of dried food and blankets. They’re for travelers who get lost, or stranded, or cut off by weather. The Circles…that is, leaders of the different villages….make sure they’re taken care of and kept stocked. They are just basic shelter, a place to rest, get warm…you can’t stay there forever...but in a storm they can save you. That’s what this is.”

She was saying it to herself as much as she was saying it to him.

“We hang out in here for a while…staying fairly close together…then we just make like two teenagers by the net shacks after a Dance for a little while. After that the loop can be set up on the sensors with some retouch and sound and you and I have at least three and a half hours to come up with a plan to finish my mission and get you back to your team….and maybe get a nap.”

 He looked at her steadily, breathing... _she knew the pattern..six in, eight out._

“I was an awkward teenager on a fruit farm. You’re going to need to talk me through this net-shack-dance thing.”

_Still the wisecracks but his eyes were serious again._

“What kind of sensors are we talking about?”

 

He reached up as he said this and touched the silver ring on her ear.

_So he knew about Portia. How much had General Organa told him after she left?_

 

His fingers stayed against the side of her face and traced under her jaw, like he was gauging something, measuring.

It felt way better than it had any right to....

  
“Portia,” she said, “I’m going to take the mod off for….” she looked around at the misty room “…thirty minutes. If anything goes wrong flash the lights and I’ll put it back on.”

She laid it on the counter with her right hand and turned back to step in close and kiss him, as herself, for a first kiss.

_When she was young she’d learned a lesson with first kisses. They should be two, one right after the other. The first one is always better small and light, just to test, the angle… the feel of it.. The best were sweet because you knew there’d be a second._

_It was still true._

 

Their clothes were soaked from the mist of the water shower.

_It was terrifyingly wasteful, oh hell she hoped they were recycling it somewhere._

 

It made getting his shirt off much harder than it ought to have been, but they managed. He had a silver chain around his neck with a thin metal ring on it that caught for a minute but then fell back against his collarbone. When he pulled the damp silk of the black dress over her head the slip beneath came with it. At least with his trousers they were working with gravity. That was always a blessing. The beautiful white rounded counter was just at the level of her back but somehow instead of moving he lifted her up onto it, for a little while.

Even when they could they didn’t say much, not then. He’d said her name, or started to against her neck which felt dangerously good but she’d stopped his mouth with her fingers as she had at the door.

Shhhhhh....No audio in here but…..even here, a bad habit.

I’m so sorry, she tried to say but he turned her hand and kissed her fingers and that got lost as well.

  
They made it into that spray of water eventually and she’d managed to turn her face away from kissing him long enough to rinse that wretched eye make-up off, finally watching the black spiral down in the water around their feet. There was soap of some kind on one tile on the wall. He was the one who found it.

"Close your eyes," he said, and washed the last of the dye gently off her face.

He had cuts, bruises, and small burns on cheekbones, elbows and legs, healing well enough, from the look and feel of them.

But then she found other scars, like square punctures, behind his ears and just at his hairline above his temples. She touched them, rather than saw them, smoothing his wet hair back, longer now than she had remembered.

 

Dameron? .....they  _weren’t battle scars._

 It was the only time he moved her hands away.

 

She’d stupidly told Portia thirty minutes. Water-soaked, awkward and shaking a little from the whole thing she stepped out of the shower and slipped the ear-clip back on.  
She had gathered up a towel to dry her face at least,…it wasn’t cold but she was dripping wet, and worried she’d lost track of time suddenly.

“Is everything still go?”

[“Yes, Kayly. Situation unchanged. You are still secure”]

“Thank you.” _Thank you._

Dameron was behind her, handing her a beautiful white robe made of something soft. He’d already found one exactly like it and put it on himself.

 "Where'd you get that?"

"On the wall," he pointed,"they have a bunch of them."

  _Wow_.

 

 

 

“How many of these these things have you actually watched?" he asked her.

"What?"

"The melodrama vids, like the one you had us acting out here….." he was rubbing his hair…. _Damn he had nice hair…_ with another towel.

_Portia had shown them a few for Cultural Lessons and outlined several more. Kayly and Niki had vastly preferred the musical ones where people ran around randomly bursting into song every few minutes, they'd spent half a winter acting them out. The Rat had liked droid comedies best, especially the kind with lots of goofy physical humor._

 

"Fuck you Dameron, are you criticizing my spycraft?"

"No, no, never, absolutely not. You got in here, you saved my ass, have kept us alive but for…. complicated reasons… I watched a lot of the classics when I was a kid. This kind can go a couple of different ways from here."

["He is correct."]

“Most of them involve either us having sex and getting back together in some way, shape or form, or one of us shooting the other one and then getting acquitted after a dramatic trial because the judge falls in love with us, right?"

["Is he asking you to shoot him? The scans in here are very basic but the more precise ones in the lifts indicated that he is probably suffering from inadequately treated post-trauma..."]

"I'm not shooting you, Dameron.”

“And thanks for that, but what I mean is shouldn’t we have at least one or two more dysfunctional moments or something?”

He wasn’t wrong.

 

 

They had more fun that was probably good for them knocking over some furniture and throwing things. Then a pillow fight with the sofa cushions, before they finally made it to the bedroom. A dive under the ludicrously soft sheets turned into what probably could have passed for a wrestling match, a badger fight or sex . Portia assured them that she could tinker with the audio files sufficiently to make their laughter pass for something else.

[“I have enough,” she said, “The scans are altered and on loop. You can speak freely.”]

 

They had just over three hours clear.

 

She laid the earclip aside again.

Portia understood the need for privacy in such personal matters.

_There were also just things that would be made way more stressful by the voice of her father’s old commander in her ear._

As it was, she and Dameron would have a few more hours of shelter to be....if not what they should have been, at least themselves.

“It’s alright,” she said,.. _a baldfaced lie, as he surely knew....._  then lay down beside him so they could tell each other all that they were able to, while the storm raged outside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Attempted canoodling. Well, you can't just leave two attractive people in a hotel bathroom, so I do my best.
> 
> Also, yes. Kayly hears Draven. Life is so not fair.


	21. The Eldest Lady of Harbortown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Going back to the day Kayly and her friends say goodbye to General Organa and their friends on the Raddus. Kayly Andor and her friends, along with Bodhi Rook, say heartfelt goodbyes to General Organa and Admiral Ackbar to wind a risky path back to Home. As they wait for Portia to contact them, Kayly has a dream in which she hears a story of the Burning at HarborTown, and is given yet another glimpse of how residents of her home world see her parents and herself. When Portia does contact the Esperanza she makes it clear that their homecoming may be even more risky than they feared

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Never gong to stop crying over Admiral Ackbar....and....everybody.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Do you want to be the one to take us out?” Bodhi said.

“I….I suppose so.”

 _It was far better to do something,_ she thought, _to concentrate on the task of flying, rather than just sit and think about what lay behind and might lay ahead._.

He lifted his hands from the controls and tucked them behind his head, leaning back in the seat with a smile. “So I’ll just nap then.”

“Please don’t Bodhi!” Ava called from down in the small cabin.

“It’ll be fine,” Kayly shouted back, slightly offended, “Don’t get your fur all ruffled. I’ve had almost two years of flying lessons, remember? We’re not even doing anything yet.”

 

Kayly unlocked the docking magnets and set the program. Easing back on slow thrust and she took them out of the Raddus’ wide and graceful main bay. In the rear cameras she caught sight of Leia Organa standing still on the platform watching them go as other crew moved around in the flight bay. As they cleared the tracking and the bay clearance called them out she caught one last shrinking glimpse of the General finally turning to walk away back through the bulkhead doors to the interior of the ship.

  
The other escort craft had mostly already deployed. Bodhi worked the comms and they took their place in the rear of the line.

“Ava, Paave,” Bodhi called. “Come up here and see this. The Raddus and her escort ships are all going to make the jump in random formation. It’s kind of beautiful to watch.”

 _One way or another, you will probably never see it again_ , Kayly thought.

 

“Come on, come on,” she heard Ava saying to Pavy quietly, “Let’s go. I’ll be brave enough if you come with me.”

  
They unbuckled.….. _Kayly had been unable to persuade either of them that it was not necessary to put on restraint belts the very first second they came aboard_ ….. and came up into the cockpit.

 

The Raddus had pulled around as Esperanza slow-impulsed out and to the far back of the escort formation.

 

They could see the full graceful curved shape of the great ship now, traced by her landing and proximity lights, covering the diamond-sharp holes in the black around her.

The X-wings and dumbbell-shaped support craft looked like her children following her.

“Decrease thrust and hold on secure mark,” Bodhi said quietly.

_Kayly wasn’t sure if he was speaking to her, himself or the nav computer, but it hardly mattered really._

 

They dropped further back as the Resistance’s flagship moved ahead.

“The forward escort will go first,” Bodhi Rook said pointing while Ava peered around his shoulder, “then the Raddus and lastly the rear escort, with roughly point five seconds between each. Just watch.”

“Is it like turning into the wind?” Pavy wanted to know.

“Not at all, I’m afraid” Bodhi told him with a smile.

“But will they run before they jump?” Ava asked. “I mean, I know they don’t but will it look like that?”

Bodhi laughed then.

“A little bit,” he said.

Pavy crouched behind Kayly’s seat and reached around to hug her shoulders.

 

Then the five-pointed star-like shapes of the front dozen X-wings darted forward, lit like blinks of white light and were suddenly gone.

In the same heartbeat the Raddus seemed to raise herself like a Bequa over a wave, brighten and vanish.

Then the last dozen small ships shone out and disappeared.

 

The sheet of stars around them was empty. The Esperanza was left alone.

 

“Goodbye, friends,” Ava said.

_Kayly could see from the corner of her eye that she was squeezing Bodhi’s hand but could not tell what she was saying to him by it._

 

“That was really lovely,” Paave of the Far Islands said. “I’m glad I saw it.”

Then he leaned forward to kiss Kayly’s cheek. “Turn us toward home now, Wayfinder,” he said, the way his kingly ancestors had. “This Far Voyage is done.”

 

 

 

 

 

_Admiral Ackbar had said his farewells on the upper deck before they left, taking Kayly’s hand and bowing in a courtly fashion. “Tell your parents that Mon Cala never forgets,” he said, “To give way to evil condemns the galaxy to submission” your mother said upon that terrible and glorious day. Her words and example inspired Raddus and his inspires all of Mon Cala still.”_

_Mama really said that?_

_Then he smiled widely at Pavy. “If this old shell lasts a little longer I promise I will come and see your Ea’s oceans, if not remember me there. We sailors must stick together.” He bowed to Ava as well and winked one of his upside-down winks, which set her giggling. Bodhi he hugged hard and long without a word._

_“Watch over them,” Bodhi asked, “as much as you can.”_  
_“Of course,” Gial Ackbar said and left them then to return to his bridge._

_“Good luck, Private Andor,” the General told her on the platform. She placed the holo-disks in her hand and closed her fingers around them with her own._

_Whatever it was she might have planned to say after she never got the chance to because Ava threw both her arms around her in an impulsive hug, to the General's obvious surprise and delight._

_“Oh Ava! Thank you. I hope we will meet again.”_

_“And as for you, Flight Commander Rook,” Leia Organa said, looking over Ava’s head at the pilot. “You have your orders you card-hiding old con man.”_

_“Yes, Your Highness.” Bodhi said._

_Leia Organa arched an eyebrow at that but smiled and stepped near the older pilot. Ava had let go of her finally to stand by Kayly and clasp hands firmly with Shared Endeavor,_

_“We can neither of us ever go home,” the Princess said to Rook quietly and for a moment she looked very small and brave, almost like the white-clad girl in all the old vids. “but perhaps that is why we dedicate what remains of our lives to helping others find and protect their own, because we alone understand what that really means.”_

_He bowed and kissed her hand. “When you find Commander Skywalker,” he said, “give him my regards, and tell him how sorry I am we never got that sabbac league going.”_

_“Go find your family, Bodhi Rook,” she told him, “and may the Force be with you all.”_

 

 

  
“Set the calculations for the jump to light-speed,” Kaylyra said. “Let’s go.”

 

“Wait!” Ava yelled, “I want my belts on!”

She and Pavy raced down to their seats with unseemly haste.

“Oh for fuckssake! I’m cleared for combat flight you know you pigeon-hearts!” Kayly called back.

Bodhi laughed so hard he had to wipe his eyes with one of the tissues from his jacket pocket.

“Punching it,” he said, and they made the first jump.

 

 

 

 

  
It took seven separate jumps in all, with random pauses and at least one orbital break of several hours through a beautiful system with multiple gas giants.

_Portia had set them a tricky course. Without Bodhi she would have been a nervous wreck._

 

 _Who is she trying to confuse,_ Kayly wondered. _Us or the enemy?_

 

  
In the end they reached the last coordinate exit, and waited.

Bodhi left her in the cockpit and went back to the cabin to check on everything.

 

“Are they ok?” Kayly asked, when he came back, bringing her a mug of tea.

“Either they now trust your flying or they feel much better about the upgrades the ship, ” he said. “They’re both asleep.”

“I blame Dameron for this,” she said, “”he had too much fun ragging me in front of them.”

 

  
Atravis sector…..no, actually not exactly those were the closest well-mapped coordinates. Old, Imperial territory, lightly trafficked but still considered Remnant.

Risky at first glance but they were floating shut down and space was very very big. If you were small, and quiet with a faint enough…or unfamiliar enough….. power signature you could hide anywhere.

 

_One of her instructors had once said almost exactly that, talking about how Han Solo had once hidden from pursuit by an Imperial destroyer by actually magnetically parking on her bridge-struts and then shutting every system but main cabin enviromentals off. He’d escaped hours later by floating away in dead-float with the off-shuttled debris._

_“Sweet trick,” Max had said._

_Yeah, Kayly thought and if you scale it up the same principle works for a whole planet._

 

They looked out at the stars for a while and drank their tea. The coordinates didn’t make a huge amount of sense, but Portia knew to look for them here and the only choice was to wait. Only she could give them the last jump start point.

 

  
Kayly pushed her seat to recline finally and took a rest herself.

 

 

____________________

 

 

 

She dreamed that she was walking on the long wharf at HarborTown. It was dawn but so many things looked different.

There were new capstans and rails on the Fishing Dock side taller than the old chipped ones, mostly freshly painted green and white. She tried to walk toward Markey’s warehouse but there where it should have been was another building, almost the same but with a bigger, newer door painted bright blue with a nice carving of a fish on it. Everything seemed angled just a little differently from the water, and the big tackle beam over the upper story loft doors looked different. The little dive pub that used to half-dangle right over the barge platform was gone and there was a bunch of new half-built booths lining that side, all set back from a new wider stairway down to the water. No one seemed to be around and everything was silent except for the  sound of the sea and the gulls diving and calling. There weren’t even any boats tied up. This didn’t particularly worry her. It was one of those dreams that you know is a dream while you’re having it and nothing seemed particularly ominous, just suspiciously un-fishy.

At last she did see a human sitting alone on a bench at the edge of the last dock and walked up to see who it was. They were dressed in ordinary tan and blue, with bare feet with a wide grey and white striped blanket wrapped around them like a shawl as if against a heavy morning’s chill.

It was Eldest Lady Perin.

“Kaylyra Blackbird!” the person said turning as if she just then noticed her there.

“Hello, Eldest Lady,” Kayly said.

_She had always been a little afraid of Eldest, growing up. Second Lady Macha was Mama’s good friend and Youngest Olwen too, but Eldest had always seemed….. like the Rat used to say…..as if she not only knew what you had done yesterday that nobody saw you do but also what you were thinking of doing tomorrow and so, by the way idiot child, you’d better not._

“Well, this is a most pleasant surprise” the Lady said, pulling back the blanket shawl from her head. Her iron-grey hair looked to have far more silver in it now and spilled around her shoulders.... _which surprised Kayly since she had never known that Lady to have it unbraided_.

She seemed to hold her right arm very stiffly close to her side, as if it hurt her and instead reached across to pat the bench beside her with her left hand, indicating that Kayly should sit.

  
“Are you alright, Ma’am?” Kayly asked as she dutifully sat.

“I will be soon,” the Lady said. “Word had reached us that you were safe but your parents will be overjoyed to truly see you again, and a great burden will be taken from your brother’s heart as well. Tell me, the other children too? They are well?”

“Paave and Ava? Yes Ma’am, they’re fine.”

_You know, when you squinted the right way she even looked a little like a taller, older, thinner version of the General._

 

“Ah, the Far Trader’s son will come home as well,” the old woman said, thoughtfully “That may explain many things in the Pattern that have puzzled us….yes."

"Ea brings both the knife to cut and the means to bind anew and yet we always struggle against that error of thinking we can see ahead of time what the weaver intends. We can only trust the hand and the fiber. Still, I am glad that I have lived to see that thread.”

 _She did something then that Kayly could never have imagined outside of a dream, she wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand_.

 

“Ma’am are you sure you are ok?”

_It occurred to Kayly that she had very seldom seem one of the Ladies….or any Sister….look so alone before._

  
“I was struck a blow,” the Eldest said, ”standing almost here at this very spot. I had been speaking with Lissa’s youngest son, come to show me a new little baby, born from his Householding with that Fisher girl on Eli’s boats. They were too both young for babies. They had been told and for all their stubborn defiance to their families before the babe was born Lissa’s Tim understood that now. He had come to me for advice, while the girl wept and rested at a friends house back on the shore and was filled with such fear of the responsibility he found thrust on him that it was a pain to see him. Yet it seemed to me that the pride and joy in his eyes as he held out the tiny red-cheeked infant could win out despite all. “You know enough to be afraid, Tim Lissa’s-son, that is the beginning.” I thought and I wondered how to explain to him how great fear overcome sometimes builds the strongest foundation. I thought of your father as I told him these things, Kaylyra.”

She reached over and covered Kayly’s hand with her one good one. Kayly noticed that even the gulls had stopped calling.

“Ea’s sky was filled with thin grey clouds, from the rains that had passed off and I have wondered sometimes that if the day been clear we might have seen the black shape a few heartbeats sooner and perhaps saved more, but afterwards I heard your mother tell Thea Doonan that the ships of the enemy moved so quickly that even the resourceful ghost in the tower at Nexa had no chance to do more than send up her thin cry of alarm from the transmitter on the high dunes. I could think of nothing else then but that boy and his baby, bound tight to his chest and so I shoved him backwards off the dock when the blow came like a hammer and the wind and fire behind it”

_Kayly still knew that this was a dream but she wondered now whether it was hers._

 

“Tim and the baby…? Were they…?”

Perin smiled, “They are well. He landed backside down in one of the only boats still at dock and the debris fell over them while he shielded his child. The wind and wave that sent this old one, and half the wharf, flying into the Harbor, pushed them under the back end of the dock. The searchers found them by the babies cries, still in her senseless father’s arms. They saved each other and are both well. Nearly drowning saved these failing bones from burning, but I do not remember how, for Ea in her mercy took that knowledge from me. My Sisters found me on the shore and their strong hands pulled the broken boards from me. My Beautiful Youngest found me first. That graceful one was badly shaken, for it was she who had fired the guns that slew the Enemy. She laid her brave head beside mine with tears in her eyes as she had not done in so many long years, not since she had first come to us fearless, fair, and delicate.”

Perin looked at Kayly now, she did not look either sad or frail anymore.

“When my Then-Eldest, wise Anna, clear eyed even as sickness sapped her strength, saw our young Olwen, the net-menders ninth child, she said “Look how Ea sends us a white arrow, such as the Far-Islanders make, with a shaft of rowan and a silver point. She arms us. War is coming my loves.” Tears came to her then, as they have come to me now, despite her courage but the truth of her words have returned to me again and again in the Pattern of my time. I remembered them when Tom Markey brought your dark-eyed father to us, and I watched your mother turn to face the sea with fire in her hand. I see it in the lines like steel that cut but strengthen your brother’s arm and heart and the tears of all the Dock as we laid young Billy's ashes in Ea's sea. I see it in the hope that your black feathered parents have brought to the people of the Harbor.”

Kayly looked around. The sky had grown dark with clouds and the wind had picked up, coming off the water.

“Eldest Lady why are you telling me this?” she said

  
“Kaylyra, Jyn’s daughter, you would have made a fine Sister of a Circle as I have often thought, in some other turn of the frame, but whatever your way you are an anchor that many threads will bind to. I welcomed you first and I am glad to be able to say farewell to you.”

She stood up from the bench then took her blanket-shawl off,  shook it out then let it go.

The rising wind carried it away, out over the Harbor.

Perin watched it go and laughed. Then she turned back. Her hair was black and streaming wild and nothing was wrong with either of her hands. She held Kayly’s face and kissed her forehead.

“Come home now child, this storm will pass but there are others behind it.”

 

  
_____________

 

 

 

 

 

“What?” Bodhi was saying.

Kayly sat up, bolt awake “What’s happening?”

The cockpit was still dark, powered down. Bodhi was sitting in the co-pilotss seat with his hand held near his left ear.

It was a gesture she recognized. Her parents did the same thing sometimes when Portia was “talking” to them.

_“A silly reflex,” Mama always said, "just a leftover from a lifetime on headsets._

 

_Portia should have been speaking over the ship’s audio. Why was she talking to Bodhi only on the mod?_

 

He looked at her, but shook his head. Portia must still be “speaking.” He waved a hand at Kayly and reached across her toward the nav-controls, and then above his head to power the engines. He was setting a jump.

“Damn it Portia,” what the hell do you mean….”back door?”

“Bodhi? What’s happening?”

He turned to her, wide-eyed and serious. “The First Order is on the ground on Ea. They are in a communications lock-out. Portia is taking us in……differently, she says.”

 

“Hell!” he said.

He looked down briefly, listening, and then up at her. “You got high scores on gunnery as I recall, right?”

_Six in, eight out._

"I was recommended with a 9.85 out of a possible ten,” she said.

Bodhi reached toward the console and activated power to the primary cannon.

“Good,” he said. “Because the last time I actually shot anybody was Eadu right after your grandfather was killed. I might be rusty. Pull the firing controls up and make sure Ava and Paave are still belted. We may be coming in “hot” as you fighter-kids like to say.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Converging with "Fire".


	22. Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> General Davits Draven, retired, asks some questions of Kaylyra Andor after her interview with him. He remembers Jyn Erso, a woman who was and in many ways still remains a mystery to him, both in her original interrogation and a tense "exit" interview after Endor. He remembers the change he saw in Cassian Andor after the return from Eadu, and how he had not recognized it at the time. He also hears the story of Jyn and Cassian's wedding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A throwback to Chapter 3, because I have long considered what three questions Draven would have asked Kayly. Also has parts that would have fit just before Chapter 80 of "Over the Edge"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
They sat in silence awhile, himself in his father’s old chair and the girl on the sofa. She seemed to be carefully considering what he had said.

  
Out in the pantry Draven could hear the clinking of dish-ware.

He reckoned he had perhaps another thirty minutes before his relentlessly optimistic spouse would peek out of the kitchen to check on them. No doubt Rook was being made to hand dry every teacup in the set and return the boxes to high and low shelves. Force only knew what inaccessible storage area this good china had even come from.

_Dear Thorn, what was it you so wanted me to say to this child? Or she to me? Do you even know?_

Maybe that was the mark of a dedicated physician, or a true survivor, the stubborn belief despite endless evidence to the contrary that healing was somehow possible.

 

_Very well, Thorn, for you, one last time._

 

 

  
"May I ask you a few questions Miss Andor?”

 

 

_________

 

 

 

  
Miss Kaylyra Andor's choice of questions had been interesting.

_“Was my Mama’s father a criminal?”_

She had asked about Galen Erso and his culpability. Andor had done almost the same in his final interview.

  
_Did Jyn Erso still grieve for her father?_

 

 

It was a struggle now to remember what it had been like in those tense days, maybe because it was only weeks after that they finally grasped the horror in its entirety.

_Then they had still been stumbling in fear of a monster they sensed but could not yet see clearly._

There was a reason the history had all been re-written. The truth laid blame on them all.

 

  
When it came right down to it, despite months of hard work, the Alliance had known terrifyingly little about this slender thread they’d hung their hopes on.

Daughter of a high-level Imperial energy scientist, born in a Clone Wars prison camp. Separated from her father between the age of five and nine. _Had the mother tried to take the child and run?_ There was some evidence they had all tried to defect, but if that were so they must have waited too long or trusted the wrong people.

  
When the child appeared in Gerrera’s cadre she had been about nine, source analysis said. There was no sign of the mother.

_Dead seemed a fair guess. Too risky to use the mother as leverage until they knew more._

 

A hardened terrorist in her early teens, the girl seemed to have walked away from Gerrera’s violent inner circle at roughly seventeen or eighteen. How? There was certainly no record of anyone else ever doing such a thing and living to tell the tale.

_It was a story he would still be quite curious to hear, but he seriously doubted this child knew it._

 

  
After that the trail of aliases and petty crime.

The woman born “Jyn Erso” had survived years on the run, most of them entirely alone. Add four months in an Imperial labor camp and the fact that she still had enough fight left in her to disable two decorated Spec Ops Pathfinders with nothing but a shovel spoke to psychic armor stronger than ion- tensile steel.

According to Lt. Melshi's terse report and the notes of the security escort team that had brought her in after processing she had said not a word.

 

_"Flat affect could be a symptom of no longer caring for anything beyond her own survival. Who we are and what we want may not matter to her,” he’d postulated as they set up the room._

_"Perhaps," Andor had conceded, "or a sign that she thinks she already knows."_

 

  
They would need to find leverage, a way to get her off-balance quickly. The plan was to throw whatever they had against the wall and see what stuck while setting up a hammer and chisel scenario, standard for a hostile intake. Andor was young.  _It was painful now to remember just how young._ At twenty five, he was close enough to her age to set up an asymmetric dynamic.

Though there'd been nothing in the files to indicate it would matter either way, it also might not hurt that Andor was quite good looking.

They brought her in, taking off the shackles only at the conference room entrance. It had seemed a little paranoid even to him but Melshi had been most insistant..

_“Make sure she sees the X-wings, the equipment, the air-strip,” Andor had said. “Walk her in the long way. She needs to know this isn’t a cave on Onderean. She needs to know this is an Army.”_

 

Draven had opened and pressed hard. Using her real name and then almost immediately laying out the identification of Galen Erso.

There was no time for games even if he’d wanted to play them. Cards on the table was his introduction.

_We know who you are. We know why you’re hiding. Time to bargain._

 

She had spoken of her Imperial father with practiced and sullen contempt.

“I like to think he's dead," was the toss back, after a quick cool glance around the room, "it makes it easier."

_Ah well, it had been too much to hope they’d crack her on the opening play and he’d warned Mothma and Organa not to expect it._

 

The pass went back to Mothma and then Andor as the game began in earnest.

 

 

  
The Senator had impressed him mightily in the Nightingale position that day. He'd had concerns about using her initially, but it seemed as if all those years of high stakes political poker games, even if she usually lost, still stood her well.

The problem was that for all her shrewdness she clung to the idea of this as a negotiation and the cold truth was that they had very little "carrot" to offer "Lianna Hallick."

_"I won't lie to this girl, Draven, let's be very clear about that. I will not promise her something I know we can never give."_

_Your conscience will be the death of you ma'am which is, of course your choice,_ he remembered thinking, _but tell me, are you prepared to have it be the death of thousands, maybe millions, of others? I am not._

Andor had stepped up then, still able to manage that charm that would have rung false from Draven.

_"There will be no need for you to lie about anything Senator. Nothing is more likely to unsettle her than the truth. I doubt this young woman has trusted a living soul in years."_

 

  
In the end it wasn’t threats, appeals to conscience or probes about her father that cracked that impressive shell.

Andor had been the one to slip the blade in.

"But your old friend Saw Gerrera, HE'D remember you, wouldn't he?"

_Oh, those green eyes had flashed then._

 

Andor had been right.

Jyn Erso had thought this extraction meant Gerrera had come for her or else that the Alliance had done it on his behalf.

Contempt and defiance turned in that instant to…anger, _or was it disappointment?_

 

_Force. Was it that simple? A child, bitter that Daddy had abandoned her._

Except in this case "Daddy" wasn't Galen Erso....or not only Galen Erso.

_Who was this girl, really? This was more than one of Gerrera’s foot soldiers, disillusioned and walking away from the fight._

_Only love breeds that kind of pain._

 

Whatever she was she wasn't an idiot. The girl knew she'd exposed herself and, recovering, now looked directly at the Senator. 

  
"Aren't you all on the same side?"

_Sarcastic, a feint, but a telling question all the same. She was fishing for information on Gerrera, rather desperately._

 

She didn't know about the split with the Alliance. She must have left the Partisans before Iziz.

_Damn it._

 

He’d looked at Mothma but she had slipped her gaze aside to her fellow Councilor.

There was something here no one had put in the file. Was that why Bail Organa had insisted on being present?

_It was not an answer he would ever get now. No one left alive but Mothma would know and if she hadn’t told anyone by now she was clearly planning to take it to her grave._

 

The Senator brought up the “planet-killer” weapons program, but the girl genuinely seemed to have never heard of it.

That surprised him.

_Even if there had been no contact with Galen Erso, even if the mysterious mother was dead, how could she know nothing?_

_Why had Gerrera kept her all those years if not as leverage against the father or some payment, perhaps keeping her out of Imperial hands for double-agent services rendered?_

_If so, why had he let her go?_

 

  
Andor laid out the last card, the report of the pilot that Gerrerra had captured. The whisper that Galen Erso might be probing the possibility of selling information.

 _Too soon,_ Draven thought reflexively, but he gave Andor his head.

When you have good people you trust them.

Andor was showing the strain, badly after Kafrene, but who among them wasn’t by then?

Anyway the boy was a hound once he got the scent of something and he was the one who’d drawn first blood.

_If you think you’ve spotted an opening here Captain, chase it down._

 

“He says he was sent by your father.” That tone was carefully chosen. He was drawing the girl in, laying it down as a possibility.

 _“This is what we’re hearing. Do you find it plausible Miss Erso?”_ was his message.

 

Crack.

She’d locked eyes with Andor then and there and something…… _something_ …. snapped.

_Was that where it started?_

 

If so Draven had to admit he hadn’t seen it. Certainly not as a connection between two people, not as the beginning of some sort of love story.

  
What he had seen was a successful recruitment against all odds. They had their carrot. The “potential hostile asset” didn’t move a muscle but if they’d had a monitor on her he’d have bet his life they’d have seen her heart rate skyrocket.

“And if I do it?”

The Senator offered her her freedom then, but that was a formality.

Jyn Erso wanted something else and she wanted it very badly. She wanted the truth and only Saw Gerrera could give it to her. She would take them to him.

 

He remembered hiding a smile and thinking “Good work Andor.”

 

 

 

____________

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kaylyra Andor had asked her three questions and now it was his turn.

 

  
She leaned forward slightly, weight on her elbows, ready.

_If asked yesterday he’d have said he remembered Jyn Erso very clearly but oh… he’d forgotten that coiled intensity, that sense of barely contained motion, until just now._

 

  
”Yes sir, that's how this works, isn't it sir?"

  
_Sir?_

That carefully neutral "Sir?" with the lift on the end, that was Andor through and through.

The combination of genetics and training was an astonishing thing.

  
_Have they been honest with each other, your parents? Not a question anyone could ever answer about their own parents,_ he supposed.

_Fair enough, let’s put it another way._

 

  
“Did your father ever tell you that I ordered him to kill your grandfather?”

  
No flinch. Only a narrowing of those green eyes.

 

“No,” she said, “My mother told me that.”

 

 

 

 

_______________

 

 

 

 

What exactly had happened at Eadu?

In the crowded and noisy comm center on Massassi Base four of them had been gathered around the high-security feed, himself, Weems, Lorigo, Peel. All of them had been reeling from the reports of the destruction of NiJedha that began to roll in like the pinging of gravel that hits seconds before the avalanche.

From the handful of civilian ships in orbit that had escaped the Imperial patrol sweep, and the few civilian satellites that continued unblocked for the first several minutes, came garbled messages, panicked transmissions quickly cut short by static. The stories were unbelievable.

They’d had agents imbedded in the religious communities in the mountains outside the city. Not one of them responded. All signals dead.

_It was a shadow of what would lay ahead for them all but they didn’t know that then._

 

They were too late. It was built. It was operational.

 

  
Andor’s message came in through a very narrow safe-window, heavily coded. He was behind lines. Confirming the weapon, the destruction..with eyes-on confirmation. He had a location for the weapons research station. The coordinates for Eadu followed. He was asking for order reconfirmation…the code designation he used implied uncertainty, based on additional information.

  
There was no time to re-contact Aerin for confirmation of the termination order. They had only a few seconds and he was the senior command officer.

He remembered all too well the crushing fear, and the anger.

  
_The Alliance and all that they had fought and died for, cities, worlds….all on the razors edge now because someone had hesitated five years ago during the Ghost uprising._

_This “pilot” had likely been bait for Gerrera and the Empire had just destroyed a city to get one man._

_Even if it was true that Imperial Scientist Galen Erso had finally grown a conscience and wanted to defect or bargain it was too little too bloody late. They had a shot at a key Special Weapons Development player. They were taking it._

 

_“I would have done the same,” Cracken told him afterwards, and Jan said something similar but they would never really know, would they?_

 

Six hours later Andor’s beacon vanished and Draven, assuming him lost, sent in the fighters.

Two hours after that he found out he’d ordered in friendly fire on his own team and three innocents but it was too late to stop the first run.

  
The failure was his and no one else’s.

 

 

 

 

 

They’d come in on a battered Imperial Shuttle.

Merrick’s returning fighters had some interesting stories of action they’d seen from the ground but it was Andor’s droid who had confirmed that they had the defecting Imperial pilot…. _.who the droid had pointed out archly had “performed exemplary service,” whatever the hell that meant_ …along with two survivors from Jedha and the girl. There were only minor injuries.

 

Draven had been waiting on the landing strip as they docked.

_Even if Aerin had been there he would have gone himself. Andor was his agent. He would look him in the eye. He owed him that._

  
As the landing crew pulled the shuttle round he watched. The K2 had opened the cockpit hatch and seemed to be sitting inside talking with a bearded, bedraggled looking young man in Imperial coveralls. Captain Andor was talking to the others, the civilians, down on the ramp. Erso stood behind one of the Jedhans, a short-haired man in grey monks robes who had a hand on her shoulder. Everyone looked damp, bruised and exhausted, even the damn droid.

The girl’s face was turned away, not in grief so much as anger it seemed to him. She was damned if she’d let him or anyone else here see her expression.

He heard Andor’s voice telling them to wait for him on the ramp for the processing team before he turned to walk out.

_The hot breeze carried a few of his words through a pause in the engine noise “….stay with Jyn…let me go first….” Draven saw a big bearded man nod impassively._

 

“Do any of these people need medical?” Draven asked as the officer approached seemingly uninjured but pale, hair and shirt still soaked from what the surviving fighters had reported as horrific icy rain on Eadu.

He knew Andor better than to expect recriminations, not here anyway, but he saw at once that something had changed in him…..or perhaps it was closer to the mark to say that something had changed back.

_He saw a boy he had known on Carrida._

“Galen Erso is dead,” he said, just let it lie there.

“Get cleaned up Andor,” Draven told him “We will debrief in ten, while these people are checked…”

The officer didn’t move.

“I’d like a moment now, sir,” Cassian Andor said, voice steady and hands still behind his back.

_Very well. We'll do it here._

 

“What do you want to say Captain Andor?”

“The pilot …Bodhi Rook…. told the truth. The defection was genuine. Erso seems to have spent years secretly delaying the tech. He had sabotaged the weapon and was trying to give us instructions on how to access the flaw. Imperial security was on to him, in my opinion that’s why he used the pilot and tried an end-run through Gerrerra.”

“You have every right to to present…”

“I didn’t execute the termination.”

“Andor, I’m not going to…”

“I want to be very clear on that sir. I realized the order was based on incorrect information and I did not execute the termination order. Galen Erso died in his daughters arms on the landing platform of Eadu Station. Our fighters killed him. She saw us kill him.”

_The Captain's voice stayed absolutely level but he was not bothering to hide the strain of keeping it that way._

 

“Andor. The Council is assembling now. Syndulla is on her way. Raddus is here. He and Merrick and the Senator are going over your information. We will debrief in ten and the girl and the pilot will have their chance to…”

Cassian Andor gestured back toward the shuttle, “These people survived Jedha, sir. They have SEEN this weapon. They have gone through hell and more, fought for us and saved my life and Kay’s a half dozen times. They fought for the Alliance and as far as they know right now the Alliance betrayed them. As far as they know I betrayed them.”

_“I’m going to need a new gun” the boy had said on the evacuation from Carrida  and to the best of Draven’s knowledge he had questioned but never refused an order or a mission since._

  
_This was more than shock._

 

“I gave that order, Andor not you. If we survive the day you can take this to Generals Cracken and Reikken. I was wrong and I will face the consequences for it, but for now, get these people ready to speak to the Council and meet me in the chambers in ten.”

“Yes sir.” The heat had gone from his voice. “We will be ready.” Draven nodded to dismiss him and Andor turned heel then to walk back toward the shuttle and the people inside. 

  
Only later did it come to him, after the disastrous Council meeting, after Weems came running to tell them Scarif was under attack, after Torrek on the flight deck came to tell him the shuttle was missing, that it had gone out under the fanciful designation of “Rogue One” along with ten assorted AWOL ops personnel and an uncertain amount of ordinance.

_We._

 

 

 

 

 

 

_________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next question.

_Alright. Let's see where we stand Miss Andor._

 

 

  
“Has General Organa ordered you to give her the location of “Lighthouse” or the details of your parents war-time operation there?”

  
She did not turn or blink but he saw the pause.

She’d do something to buy herself time, now.

_Just don’t look down, child…. feigning uncertainty would be an amateur’s move in this kind of situation._

Kaylyra Andor smiled, with serene confidence.

_Good girl._

 

“No, sir,” she said, “General Organa has not.”

 

  
_And what would you do if she did? I suspect all three of us know the answer to that, don’t we?_

 

It begged the question. 

_Was Organa running her Intelligence network herself? She certainly had the skills for it, but that would be a mistake._

 

Not that anyone was asking but in his humble, geriatric opinion this was the General’s only real weakness.

Her instinct had always been to keep all the high stakes cards good or bad in her own hand and out of sight to even her closest allies until it was almost too late. It was a lesson she’d learned at Bail Organa’s knee, whether he’d meant to teach her or not.

She trusted very few after Scarif, even fewer after Endor and most of those were gone now, or had failed her. Mon, Jan, Skywalker, Solo…

_We are all the people our parents made us, Your Highness, one way or another._

  
What did you think when you met this girl Organa? This clear-eyed, selfless and fiercely loyal child of “shadows”? I’m sure you did not ask her to betray her mother and father because you knew that for her truth, family and honor are all of a piece.

 

  
_It must be agony for you._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If he didn’t finish this up soon, Thorn would have Rook baking biscuits or something

 

 

_He wasn’t in New Republic or anybody elses Intelligence Service  anymore and if Leia Organa wanted to recruit him into her army she should say so directly._

Bugger that. He was going to ask what he wanted to know, something he'd wondered about for years.

 

 

  
“Out of curiosity Miss Andor, and with apologies in advance for the fact that I know nothing of the customs of the place you grew up, but did your parents ever actually marry?”

 

 

 

  
__________________

 

 

 

 

 

  
He’d tracked them down after Endor, hiding in plain sight like sensible people. In the chaos as  the whole war changed around them.

Privacy had been at a premium with hundreds of troops and flight crews being evacuated off of Endor, transferred from the various fighters and destroyers, but the Evac Fleet Commander had found him a small room and a couple of folding chairs on that massive overcrowded Mon Calmari troop ship.

He had asked to debrief her first.

  
She wore an off-white uniform shirt, _he recognized it as hospital issue_ , and blue slacks. Few clues there.

He knew her to have been wounded on the ground at Endor. No doubt someone had given her clothes afterward. She was also wearing what looked suspiciously like Imperial Army Technical Services black lace-up boots.

  
It had been almost three years since he had last seen Jyn Erso. Her hair was longer now and braided back, also streaked a little, as if by sun.

_Draven had considered several openings but when she sat down in the chair opposite him she spared him the need to use any of them._

 

“I’m not going to kill you,” she announced, flatly.

“Good to know,’ he’d said.

“It seemed important to get that out of the way first.”

_Clearly you considered it long and hard though._

 

She'd laid hands on her knees, casually, but kept those green eyes fixed on him.

“Unless,” she said, “Unless, you even look like you are going to hurt my husband.”

 _He still had a side arm and she probably weighed 49 kg. and he was absolutely confident that she was not joking_.

  
“Why do you think I would intend any harm to Major Andor?”

“Don’t,” she said, “Don’t even bother. Just tell me why you wanted to talk to me first.”

“The Emperor is dead, Miss Erso but the war isn’t over.”

“No. I didn’t think it was. Thank you, by the way. You folks had better get busy, depending on which way those bastards decided to run and how much armament they’ve hidden over the years. Things could get very ugly before they get prettier.”

“I’ll pass on the advice, but in the meantime Miss Erso I would like to point out that while your status remains somewhat ambiguous, the three men outside that door are all soldiers of the Alliance.”

She looked at him almost surprised.

“What?” she said, “I’m a Sergeant in your fucking army, didn’t anybody tell you?”

_As he recalled Sergeant Tonc had mentioned it, but Sergeant Tonc mentioned a lot of things._

 

“Very well, what do you think is going to happen to you now Sergeant Erso?”

 

“I’ll fight,” she said. “I’ll fight with you or I’ll fight alone, in any way I can. The bastards who built an obscenity like that are going to need to be hunted down to the last stormtrooper. Good enough for you?”

He nodded. It wasn't a standard enlistment but he'd heard worse.

“How do you see that happening, Miss….Sergeant Erso?”

 

In truth he was on unsure ground. This was not the cagy and bitter girl he had interrogated three years ago. This was not even the firebrand saint demanding battle on the platform at Massassi Base.

_This woman was done with lying and she was done, it seemed, with asking._

 

“I stay with Cassian.”

“Major Andor is an top Intelligence Officer. Are you asking to be commissioned in Intelligence?”

“With all due respect, sir,”…. _she had a way of saying “sir” that made it equate roughly with “you son of a bitch” and yet did not quite break into actual rancor_ …”I don’t think you know much about what Major Andor is.”

He had tried to expect only what came with this woman. She surprised him anyway.

“What is it you feel I do not know, Sergeant?”

  
“I'll tell you three things, since we're short on time. One. He closed his eyes.”

_What?_

“We saw it," she said, "At Scarif. How many people can actually say that General Draven, sir? That thing. It burned us both. He let me carry him down out of that tower and when we saw that it was all over, that there was no way out, we sat down to die and when the fire came..." _Her voice broke a litle but she didn’t bother to to conceal it. She was done with that too it seemed._  “he held me as tight as he could with broken bones and closed his eyes. Do you understand what that meant? He trusted me. I knew he did before because had believed me and stayed with me and followed me, but that was the last biggest commitment of all. Think about all the things he’s done to himself. Think about all the things he made himself watch and never once looked away, sir. Even you don't know the half of it, I think.  He held onto me and he finally got to close his eyes. He trusted me enough to do that.”

  
“Two. He folds blankets into exact squares and can make a bed, or even a lumpy fiber mattress, up with perfect corners. It’s insane and compulsive and he laughs at himself for it. Do you know why he does it? Because he is a soldier and he cannot stop being a soldier. Because he knows what he fights for and he knows what he fights against and he believes every damn word of that Alliance oath, sir. He gave himself to your cause body and soul not because he was angry or bitter or vengeful but because he believed and he made me believe. He has made a whole planet full of good people believe."

  
“Three. He has a necklace,” she reached inside her shirt and took out the clear crystal she wore on a cord. _He had seen it before. It had been noted when she came in through processing. Kyber. A rough stone, not weapons grade, carved with religious symbols. Some kind of heirloom or beloved keepsake, it seemed, but whether from her father, mother, Gerrerra or somewhere else was unclear_. “Not like mine. He doesn’t wear it usually. He keeps it in a pocket or on a shelf back at our…back at the house we stayed in. A beautiful old person there, someone who loved him like a son…..w _hich is not a way I think he got to have too many people love him by the fucking way_ ….died and afterwards her sisters gave it to him. It’s just a clay charm pressed with words in their script. They place great value on words and sometimes print them on these marketplace charms. It says, “Turn your back on this” It belonged a child who had done terrible things but turned around to made a new life for herself after because someone trusted her and gave her that chance. He is a good man with two good men still living out there that he calls brother. He has friends who love and respect him, and he gave a home to a woman who thought she would never have one, who had stopped believing such things existed. I will go where he goes because he is my home, sir.”

  
“Do you want one more enlightening piece of information about your officer that you do not know, sir? Four. He does not blame you for any of the terrible things you sent him out there to see and do. I blame you, but he doesn’t.”

Jyn Erso stood up then and paused, looking around. “Am I supposed to be formally dismissed or something?”

“If you feel you’ve covered everything, Sergeant, that will do. I’ll talk to Major Andor now.”

She looked down at him where he sat. “One more thing. He is as fine and brave a man as you have ever served with General Draven of the Alliance to Restore the Republic and whatever army you served in before that one. You had better bloody tell him so before you say another damned word to him.”

She left the room then.

Technically she should have saluted but he was afraid if he mentioned it she might come back and say more.

 

 

 

  
___________________

 

 

 

 

 

  
At least he had succeeded in surprising this intense young woman with his last question. That was some gratification.

  
“Yes,” she answered, almost suspicious. “But they didn’t tell anbody, they didn’t even tell me and Galen until that morning. Where we live, people don’t……it’s considered more of a Coastal custom, marriage and weddings....people don't do it in the Uplands but when I was twelve or so and my brother was eight they had a big party at our house before the Pine Fair opened and invited lots of people but didn’t didn’t tell anybody what it was for,” she smiled a little now at the memory. “My father tricked his friends Tom and Dov into helping him carry some chairs from the shed, and my mother dressed up in her red dress and told her friend Bes to help her carry a chair in from the front garden……chairs are a wedding thing where we live. Papa put his good blue coat on and we all ate a picnic dinner and had a dance in the Community Hall after, their treat. Mama and Papa love dancing. There was lots of beer and Dora even sang their “song.” The Rat….that’s my brother….covered his ears because he thought it was sappy but it was actually kind of sweet, I thought.”

Kaylyra Andor, named for a droid and a lost woman laughed then.

“Half the people in our village didn't even know what it was about, but it didn't matter. The next day the Fair started and three days later after the fair was over we had the Second Annual Traditional Real Football game and everybody beat the hell out of each other so now Mama says that’s their Anniversary Riot.”

  
_He had to ask._

“Your parent’s have a “song?”

_Jyn Erso was across the galaxy and she was still upsetting his notions of the universe, it seemed._

The girl nodded, “So Mama says, Its a version of traditional song from…..the coast….they danced to it once at a friend’s wedding so Mama claimed it as theirs, although they have to share it with Tom and Thea.”

He would not in ten thousand years have asked it of her but this unexpected girl of nearly twenty one, ….. _the same age her mother had been when they dragged her in shackles from Wobani_ …..was clearly agonizingly homesick so she sang a snatch of it, in a waltz-ish time right there in his sitting room, in an untrained but pleasant voice.

 

 

Come sail the wild river  
We'll set sail together  
And oceans will call out your name  
The stars we will follow  
With hopes for tomorrow  
And start it all over again

 

Who has eyes that can see  
All the things you could be?  
Who has ears for the sweetest refrain?  
May your heart sing forever  
Where the sea meets the river  
And start it all over again

 

 

Thorn walked out from the kitchen then with a ridiculously wide smile.

Rook was being made to carry a too big silver tray of salmon salad and crackers on plates.

_Draven realized that he was never going to hear the end of the “I-told-you-so’s", no matter what came after._

 


	23. May the Force of Others be With You: Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe Dameron and Kaylyra Andor talk.....a little. Poe thinks about the desperate situation of the Rebels aboard the Falcon. How he came to be on a banking planet raid, and how his view of himself has had to change, in confindence-shattering ways. Truths get told and withheld. Some Strength is shared, some voices are remembered. Poe meets Portia.

 

_All of them had been sitting around the small console table in the main cabin of the Falcon, some on the wall seats and benches, others on crates and boxes gathered round....all that was left of "Command" anyway. They talked while their eighty companions slept, worked throughout the ship, or explored the fissured lunar cave Chewbacca had parked them in for a few days. That was all they could spare to hide, bandage their wounds, and conserve fuel while they tried to chart a course forward. Forward was the only way now._

_"We're on our own," D'Arcy said pale and soft-spoken as always but with a core of steel. "No help is coming." She and Ko were the last of the Raddus bridge crew._

_I drew a gun on her four days ago, he had told himself, sick with remorse, then shut it away._

_His need for forgiveness didn't matter now._

_"That's not true," Leia Organa said. "We're alive and the Rebellion is alive. Hope is still out there. We will have to find it and it will have to find us." Her expression was one he had seen before....that wry, weary, almost-smile._

_What made his heart break was that it seemed to have become her only expression. As if she were slipping away from them, even while she was still here._

" _The mendicants of the Guardians of the Whills had a chant," the General said, "the central core of their faith and their blessing on all who asked for their help, "May the Force of others be with you." That is what we have to reach for. New allies, forgotten allies, hope where we never thought to look for it before."_

 

 

Ok. Fair enough. He believed that.

Still, even if he lived through any of this, there was no way in hell he was going to make a detailed report of how he'd wound up tapping into bad childhood vid-viewing habits and having what turned out to be rather desperate and heart-felt covert sex with the last spy of the Resistance....or the first of Rebellion.

_Nope. Leaving that out unless specifically asked._

 

After a while Kaylyra Andor edged away from him to sit on far side of that wide bed, drawing her knees up and pulling the jewel blue sheet to her chin. She reached up to the leaf-carved headboard and found the small silver earring she had placed there, put it back on.

"Not a word unless necessary, ok?" she said quietly.

 _Not to him_ , he knew.

"Poe, can you tell me about your mission here? What's our time frame? Is your exit strategy still go?"

She was asking for a report.

He looked at the pattern of a pretty white on white mural on the ceiling over his head and outlined the "raid" they'd made on the financial records vault.

 

 

 

  
_It had been another of Leia's long-hidden treasures. Anonymous financial accounts with codes only she knew. Many of them dating all the way back to the Surrender, maybe further._

_"Whose money is it?" Rey had asked, incredulous as only a junkers kid from Jakku could be at such a thought._

_"Originally?" Leia answered, "From the familial investments of three hundred years of the Royal House of Alderra."_

_Which was the kind of statement that dropped silence on even a crowded galley full desperate Rebels._

_She had laid out her plan to them. Him, C'ai, D'Arcy, and Ko, with Finn and Rose sitting on empty crates close by._

_"The off-world assets of Alderaan were seized and looted by the Empire. After the war, the Department of Settlements and Reparations used what remained to assist survivors and create the Memorial, but these accounts were never recorded, never found. They came from private assets assembled into an blind trust during my mother's reign, intended to be inaccessible to anyone until her death or abdication. She knew the dangers my father's activities.....and mine.......placed our family in and began to make provisions while I was still an infant." Leia slid Poe a tiny data chip, her fingers lingering over it as if she were passing him a last family heirloom, rescued from a fire._

_"I learned about all of it only by accident in the years after the Battle of Yavin. During the war I accessed them to fund covert operations of my own," ....that ghostly smile again.... "But their existence was kept secret from everyone else except the late General Cracken. No one else knew. Not Ackbar. Not Luke. Not Ha...Commander Solo. No one."_

 

  
"We hacked in from the main vault," he told her, "transferred all of Leia's assets to tangibles exchanges on a dozen Outer Rim worlds."

"Nice. You moved fast while the First Order is in chaos itself and thinks you crippled. Diversifying access to the resource is good strategy, even if it means you lose part of it," Andor nodded as if they were running through a post-training evaluation and she were grading him on points.

"Brilliant except for the tripping-the-alarm-and-having-to-crawl-through-a-mismarked-disused-service-tunnel-and-almost-getting-caught thing."

"Smart ass."

That got a smile from her.

"Do you have secure a way out? Why were your friends heading for the regional transport yards?"

"C'ai has a connection," he told her, " a fourth cousin from the same seasonal nursery as him....it's a Abednedo thing...who manages the off-world recycling contract here. He didn't even know C'ai was in the Resistance but he gave him a ship to use no questions asked. Once we got inside all he has to do do is dump it at the toxins reclamation facility on the asteroid belt in this system. The Falcon will glide in with a junk ship's clearance and reclaim us at the pick up hour. We just have to be there. No second chances."

  
"Ok," she said. "That's still solid.  I....we will get you there. It's 03:00. I'll be able to access different clothes and clearance docs for us....or will in about an hour.....and we can slip out with the cleaning crews at 06:00. After that we will need to move quick. The mission I'm on is data disruption, and not just here. Our plan is to...." she began.

 _No_.

 

"Don't.." he said, abruptly sitting up and reaching for her. "Don't tell me anything.

It was his turn to lay a hand against her cheek, thumb against her lips. "It isn't safe."

Her green eyes went wide with surprise.

 

"Poe," she said, taking his hand in both of hers, putting her fingers between his..... _it probably meant something but he didn't know what._..."It's ok. They won't hear us. Everything is on an augmented feedback loop. It's safe."

  
"No," he told her, "That's not what I mean...."

_It was important that she understand._

 

"You have to listen to me, Kayly. The room may be safe but I'm not, I'm what's not safe."

 

 

 

 

 

BB-8 adored Rey.  
  
*.....Rey is good....Rey has many piloting skills. bumpier than you but that is because she loves the Falcon and it is bumpy/inconsistent/variable/broken. she is my friend and Finn's friend and Finn is your friend.. you are the more consistent/optimal pilot but she has higher skill level /abilities at mechanical repair than you. you should be friends because you are both good....*

_BB-8 said that a lot now,"good." Poe was still working out what he meant by it._

" She saved you on Jakku didn't she buddy?" he'd told him, "She'd be my friend even if that was all she'd ever done. I promise."

  
*...I am working with....R2D2-3.51993.a7146.c938.......no...no, designation/sufficient R2D2...to optimize water reclamation and air-circulation. passengers and live animals have been carried on this ship before but this is the most. R2D2 is wise and sharing of adaptive programming. why are the good people/friends/General/soldiers of the Resistance sad?....*

"A lot of our friends died, buddy....people and droids. We're in a bad spot and we have to keep fighting."

He kept telling Poe he was "good" too, usually in the middle of telling him something else. *......schematics for Praiji security systems and Kaikielus general navigational and voided infrastructure blueprints...mission critical adaptives in place. Poe you are good....*

"What?"

*.....you are a good person/soldier of the Resistance/friend...i have all data sets in storage and new tools....*

_What could you say to something like that except,_

"Thanks buddy. I think you're good too."

BB-8 would hum to himself happily and roll off.

 

 

_I think your friend Rey and I maybe also have other things in common._

 

He hadn't meant to eavesdrop but there was just so damned little privacy on the Falcon, even double-bunking people like cordwood in the service crawl ways and multi-level cargo holds.

".....you were there? You....are you ok?" Finn had whispered to her as she sat with him by the wall bunks while Rose, her numbers finally improving, slept. He was holding Rey's hands and she was leaning on his shoulder..."did that son of a bitch capture you?....did he....?"

"No," the girl said, "...it wasn't like that but it doesn't matter now....Snoke was there, he wanted to know where Master Skywalker was but it doesn't matter. He's dead now."

"But you didn't tell him." Finn said, "and Skywalker came and saved us."

"No," Rey said, almost inaudible, "I ...I did......but it didn't matter. Luke must have known what would happen, but I didn't understand."

"You killed him, though," Finn said, putting an arm around her shoulder, "You killed Snoke."

_He was a Stormtrooper, raised to believe in hierarchies, that they were all that mattered and if you chopped off the head, took out the big gun, that everything would be alright. It was a hard habit to break._

 

"No," Rey said, "I couldn't....I would have never had a chance." Her voice dropped again, "Ren did."

_They were picking up the transmissions. The Supreme Leader was dead. Long live the Supreme Leader._

 

They held her on Starkiller for how long before she escaped? Ren took her prisoner because.....Finn's story had been a little unclear but his panic hadn't been. How long?

_Maybe it was different for the Jedi. Maybe they were stronger, but she was just a kid, Jedi or not._

 

 

 

 

  
"Andor, I could still get captured. You said yourself that there's a First Order destroyer up there, and that the Consortium was likely cutting a deal. This planet is hours away from lockdown. I have no intention of being taken alive but if I am, ignorance about the details is important. They can't get out of me what I don't know."

She was staring at him and for a second she looked like the scared kid he'd force-landed on Yavin base.

 _How could you be such a bad-ass spy and not have thought of this?_ He wanted to say, almost angry. _You gave me the knife._

 

"Kayly, how much do you know about Kylo Ren? The new baby "Supreme Leader? "

She started to lift her hand to her ear then stopped. Somebody was telling her something.

_Good. That was ok. He needed she and her "handler" to both understand this._

 

"I had anti-interrogation training but in the end it didn't matter.... the bastard broke me in less than five minutes. I won't take that chance another time. We'lł make this work if we can but that's plan A. Careful isn't enough any more and brave isn't either. Leia might be safe from him. Maybe one other person we've got, but I don't get to kid myself I am, not anymore."

She was still staring at him. 

He expected her to argue, maybe, or just look at him....differently. 

 _Don't_ , he thought. _Don't look at me like I'm crazy. Don't tell me I'm wrong._

 

Kaylyra Andor was not like other people, he was beginning to realize, and she didn't do either of those things. _Was it possible to be consistently unexpected?_ She kissed him again.

 

"Tell me. What do you want? How do you need to work this?"

 

He found he could breathe. "Get your...people....to post a secured feed to Leia, somehow. You've done it before. Use old tech, old links, locations people and codes and things only Leia, or the pre-Scarif Alliance vets would know."

She nodded. "We'll find a way, Poe....Rebel Intelligence, right? We'll find a way""

He expected her to move back to her corner again, ask him questions, but she didn't do that either.

_Good. He realized that he couldn't handle that, now, here. Someday he would have to, someday soon, but not yet._

 

Instead she took his right hand and laid it palm to palm with his, lacing their fingers.

"What does that mean?" he asked.

"Sharing of Strength," she said, "Uncertainty and Struggle, implied."

 

"An hour?" he heard himself ask.

"Yes, " Kayly said, "it's pre-set. If you want to try to get some rest just say so, because that would probably be best."

The tone of voice was absolutely sincere. She even moved back....not far, a few centimeters....though she kept ahold of his hand.

"Yeah," he said, realizing he mostly meant the opposite, "you're probably right. Is that what you want?"

 

 

"Oh hell no," she said, and that pretty smile reappeared

" _Rescue Places" she'd said._

_Shelter. One more hour._

 

 

 

When she slipped the ear cuff off she reached across him to lay it on the headboard again.

"58 minutes," she said.

 

 

 

 

When the room lights flickered after what was probably 58 minutes exactly, she kissed his mouth one last time as she pushed the blue sheets aside and slipped off of the bed.

Kissed him twice actually.  Hard once, lips parting before pulling back, and then immediately again, lightly.

_Just that first time she'd kissed him in the fresher, but backwards._

If that was hello, this was goodbye, he knew.

 

 

"We crossed some work orders," she said, walking back with the damp slip she'd hung on the hook outside the shower. It was lavender, able to pass for a dress on its own, he saw now. "Extra staff uniforms have been requisitioned to the service depots on the level below this one, a security check on the hallway that will cause ten seconds of glitch, ten minutes apart. You stay here. I grab them, hot-wire a sanitary services GK-37 and get back. A quick scan doctoring here and we slip out with the night shift change. When the goons get back to take our "Desperate Encounters" characters down to Security we'll be long gone."

  
"And I stay put?"

  
_He almost said, "You're leaving me here?" And then realized that would make him sound like he was five._

  
"You sir, have no clothes that haven't been seen and possibly outline-tagged," she said. "Fifteen minutes, twenty at the absolute most," slipping on what he'd thought were socks but now realized must have been thin ballet-like slippers hidden inside her high-heeled boots. She pulled a scarf off one of the tables and tied it around her hair.

"If anything goes wrong, if I'm not back in twenty-one minutes exactly, you put this on."

She took his hand and laid the small ear cuff on it.

 

_The mysterious "Portia," right?_

 

"Put it next to your ear and it will attach. A voice will walk you through a back-up plan. Get yourself out and take it to the General. She'll know what to do." She licked her bottom lip, thinking.

"Listen," she said, "I have to warn you. If you do need to use it....there's just no way to know whose voice you will hear."

_The fuck?_

"The fuck?"

"It feeds a direct impulse to your auditory nerve. Your brain will transcribe it however it wants and brains are....weird sometimes, unpredictable."

He closed his fingers around the earring. It was light, just a ring of unmarked silver. No tarnish, no scratches, there was a tiny closed link on one side, as if something else had once been attached to it.

"Unpredictable bad or unpredictable good?"

"From what I understand it can go either way. You shouldn't need to use it. I'll be back in the 20."

"Who do you hear?"

Kaylyra Andor shrugged, "A man I met exactly once. Find your shoes, Dameron. Watch the clock."

The lights dimmed again and she went to stand by the door, hand on the frame. When it slid open partially she slipped outside without a glance back. It closed behind her.

A chrono display lit up on the wall screen, the glass of the table and the back of the door.

20:00.

Poe found the shoes where he'd pulled them off by the fresher counter and sat in one of the green velvet chairs

18:00.

17:00

He looked at the silver ring in his hand.

 

_Damn thing didn't seem to open._

He held it up close to his right ear. _Shit!_

It moved and attached to curve of his ear, not hard but firmly attached. He could feel it.

Startled, he pulled the thing off and the little ring came away easily, without even a tug

16:00

_Fuck it._

 

He put it back and reattached itself again, immediately

Nothing.

15:00

"You don't need to say anything to me if you don't want to," he said, "but I need to ask you a favor."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When he was a very little kid on rainy mornings he would throw a blanket over the end of his bed and one of the tall-backed wooden chairs to make a "base." Then he'd bring in a box for a seat, all his hand-scribbled maps, the purple data-pad and the old dog they'd had then, a barrel-chested mutt named Duck.

Duck was a pretty fair pilot, even though he fell asleep a lot.

"What are you doing in there?" His mom would say, lifting up a corner of the blue, star-printed bedspread.

"Planning a secret mission!" Poe would say.

"To where, Captain Dameron?"

Sometimes he would say "To Endor, to blow up the Deathstar!" Or, after he'd gotten the Big Book of Galactic Geography for his name-day, he'd say "the Outer Rim" and just ramble off random planet names. Usually it was, "Mooo-oom! I can't tell you. It's a secret."

"Oh. I see. Carry on then," she'd usually tell him, "may the Force be with you," because she had to get out to the orchard to help Pop, or work on the T-16 or teach that holo-course she did for the Academy on Hosnian Prime.

Always either she or Pop would bring him "supplies," aka a sandwich and homemade fruit chips.

The very best times though, were when she'd say, "Captain Dameron, do you need a co-pilot assigned for this mission?" Then Flight Commander Shara Bey, retired, would squeeze inside scrunching up so her head didn't push up the "roof" of the blanket and poor old Duck would be relegated to "astromech" duty.

Together they would maneuver asteroid storms and dodge enemy fighters, always always making it through to meet up with Green Squadron and help "Commander Skywalker" save the day.

"What are you two doing up there?" Pop would yell, looking for them and following the sound of "cannon fire", the roar of "engines" and barking upstairs.

"It's a secret mission," he and Mom would say in unison.

"Pathfinders on board and ready!" Pop would shout and try to climb in and the whole operation would usually collapse and they'd all wind up on the floor laughing.

_Had it happened a lot of times or only a few?_

In his memory it had happened many times, but was that even true? How long could he have really been that small?

By the time he was five she was letting let him take the controls on the T-16 for real. "We don't tell your Father unless he asks, ok?"

When he was seven she'd sit in the co-pilot seat and let him do stall landings on the beach.

Three weeks before his ninth birthday they'd scattered her ashes just inside lunar orbit above Yavin IV.

_All I ever wanted to do was fly Mom._

 

The day he came to tell Pop he was "deserting", he had been so nervous.

In his case it wasn't technically desertion because he had formally resigned his commission in the New Republic Defense Forces, by leaving his commander on Hosnian Prime a note explaining his conviction that the Fleet Neutrality Accord was, in the face of the gross sentients-rights violations taking place in the Imperial Remnant territories and well-documented First Order attacks on non-aligned worlds, treasonous a violation of the legacy of the Alliance and gutted every principle on which the New Republic was founded......S _tealing an X-wing and flying it to the Resistance wasn't desertion either, that was theft of government property....technically._

It had been important to him that his father understand what he was doing and why. That this wasn't some hot-headed impulse, that it was something he'd agonized over and planned for months.

"This is the Empire old, new, it doesn't matter what name they call it..... I can't sit by, watch this rise again and pretend I didn't  see, didn't recognize. You gave so much, you and Mom," he'd said, sitting at the kitchen table, Years of your lives"..... _years she didn't have, it turned out....years of **our** lives, he'd almost said, then stopped himself, swallowed, went on.._."I can't let it be for nothing. I'm a pilot. I can fly and I have to fly for a cause I believe in."

_Pop had only taken his hands with tears in his eyes, like he was sorry like he was the one who'd done something wrong._

 

Before he left that day Pop had put a chain around his neck, with the scratched steel fuel canister ring on it. Poe recognized it at once. From the little box on the table by Pop's bed. It was his mother's secret wedding ring.

 

_A pilot and a soldier in the back of a Y-wing in the middle of a war, telling the universe they had hope for a future no matter how dark things looked._

 

"You always flew with her, every mission," his father said, and Poe saw that he was wearing the old locket..... _must have dug it out of that storage trunk under his bed with their old uniforms and medals inside_....the one with his baby holo in it.

 

"This way she'll always fly with you. We both will."

 

 

 

 

 

14:30

 

"I'll help in any way I can."

The voice was very cool, businesslike, maybe even a little exasperated. "What do you want Commander Dameron?"

Hard as it was, he wasn't sorry. At least this was proof....that he still remembered what his mother's voice sounded like....for years he'd worried that all he was really remembering was the vids, the audio files. This was different. This was in his own head

Wiping his eyes with the back of his hand he was almost ashamed though. These tears weren't because of missing his mother.

They were relief. He didn't realize until he heard Shara Bey's voice how terribly frightened he'd been, that it would be someone else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Argh! Writing on tiny screens in wifi dead zones is hard! Fragmented but doing my best. This track of the story that is tricky, in part because Poe is tricky and Last Jedi is tricky.
> 
> Our beautiful kind kick-ass pilot boy has to be trauma-stressed to the max right? Have come to kind of love Poe and Kayly as two brave souls in over their heads. Also with the notion of Kayly as black ops Rogue Rebel Intelligence.


	24. May the Force of Others be With You/ Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very tiny chapter in which Portia has a one-to-one conversation with Poe Dameron and makes him a promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small but necessary link!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 **Human/Fenian descent/genetic male**  
**Height 1.72 meter**  
**Mass 78.1 kilograms**  
**Age @32 years**

 

_Well, hello there._

 

  
"I'll help in any way I can. What do you want Commander Dameron?”

 

_Slightly elevated heart and breathing rate….hardly unexpected…he was doing quite well all things considered. Cortisol levels were actually down from when he had first entered the rooms, hours previously._

_As were Kayly’s, so that was a good thing._

_Another intuitive leap, she supposed._

_Still. He was stressing a little now. She felt badly for him but really he'd brought it on himself._

 

  
**Dameron Bey, Poe**  
**New Republic Defense Fleet Academy**  
**Highest Marks all categories**  
**Grad: 22 ABY**  
**Highest Rank: Commander of Rapier Squadron**  
**AWOL: 27 ABY**

 

“You’re Portia?”

_Well, you’d better hope so young man._

 

_He was obviously having a very emotional response. She earnestly hoped she didn’t sound like anyone horrible to him._

 

“Yes. Commander. I apologize if you are hearing a voice that upsets you. As Kaylyra explained I have no control over that.”

_He nodded and worked at his breathing._

 

“No…I mean, I understand. It’s alright.”

“You should have asked.”

“You mean asked Kayly? Yeah, I suppose so…”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I was afraid she’d say no.”

_A naturally forthright person. Oh, this was all going to be very hard indeed for him, probably already had been._

 

“I will tell her when she returns, so prepare yourself for that. Why did you want to talk to me directly?’

“If I asked you to find someone, could you?”

_Funny, that’s what Leia Organa had asked._

“Possibly, that depends on many factors.”

“I want to ask you to look for someone but not tell me if you find them.”

_What?_

 

“Is your Resistance still looking for Luke Skywalker?”

_Heart rate up again, a little._

 

“No. No….” _he was hesitating, uncertain where to look. He had very good vision, better than 20/20._

 

“Luke Skywalker…found us but he… he’s no longer alive.”

_Poor Leia Organa._

 

“That is sad news, Commander. Please tell General Organa that I am so very sorry for her loss. I tried but was never able to find any other clues to his location after his last contact with the cartographer and the isolationist/revivalist cult on Jakku.”

“That was you?”

“Yes. I bundled the data into a packet sent to her 24 standard weeks ago. I know she received it but that was my last contact with her before the First Order Assault commenced.”

_He was laughing now, but his serotonin levels indicated that the laughter was not from amusement._

  
_She might as well ask then, since there was never going to be a good time._

 

“Commander, out of curiosity, do you know if he has done any post-mortem visual or auditory imaging?”

“What?”

“Skywalker. He was a Jedi. They used to boast they could do all manner of long-range telekinetic projection, even to the point of maintaining neural energy projections postmortem. I never saw any of them do more than bundle energy and fling objects about but he seemed to be diligently self-modifying and Leia Organa has enhanced energy signature perception so I wondered if perhaps he might have tried to contact her.”

_Poe Dameron didn’t answer._

_Maybe he didn’t know._

  
“Holy shit. Portia, what are you?”

  
_Oh good heavens._

 

“Are we discussing philosophy Commander Dameron?”

  
“Are you an AI?”

“Come now, don’t talk nonsense. I am an ally of your Resistance and Leia Organa has accepted me as such. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?”

  
_Best to get him back on track before Kayly came back and boxed his ears. She had gotten what she’d gone for and was waiting for the second surge-reset to get past the surveillance and return safely._

 

“You were asking me to find someone, Commander, if not Skywalker then who?”

“My father.”

 

 **Dameron, Kes**  
**Army of Alliance to Restore the Republic/retired 5 ABY**  
**Field Commendations for Bravery: Seven**  
**Highest Rank: Sergeant, Special Operations Field Command.**

 

“Ah. To be clear, you said wanted me to locate him but not tell you that I’ve located him?”

“Yes. I can’t….I can’t even know if he’s still alive.”

 

_The bio-analysis programs in the lifts and surveillance areas were calibrated to screen for theft and identity verification but she had looked at some of the data with an eye to determining whether the man was injured._

_Neuroendocrine and epinephrine balance were ever so slightly off._

_High resiliency was probably screened for in pilots and he had clearly been treated with a quick injection of a processing regulator post-trauma. Hardly adequate but still, this was more than battle stress….something else had happened to this young human….it was almost like…._

Then it came to her.

 _“ Kylo Ren,” he had said. That, she knew, was the appellation that the surviving Blackness-consumed organic seemed to be using. The one that had once been Leia Organa’s child._ _“…the bastard broke me in less than five minutes…”_

  
_She felt quite ill for him_

 

 

“I understand, Commander Dameron. What do you want me to do with this information once I obtain it?”

 

“If….he’s dead, find out the details and….save them for me…if he isn’t….get a message to him, if you can and tell him I’m alive and alright. If…if it’s possible, keep him safe. Don’t let them find him.”

_He was keeping himself calm and looking at his hands. He was a brave, brave person. No wonder Kayly felt kinship with such people._

 

“Commander Dameron? May I call you Poe or would that increase your stress levels?”

_He did not answer immediately._

 

“Ok,” he said, slowly, “sure…Portia, you can call me Poe.”

“Poe,” Portia said, “I will do that. You have my word.”

“Thank you.”

  
The door opened and Kaylyra Andor walked in, with the necessary equipment and a bundle of freshly laundered uniforms under one arm. It took her a moment, to notice but she was a very observant and intuitive person. Also Dameron probably looked somewhat distressed and/or guilty. As she'd noted, deception did not come naturally to him.

_Well, she’d warned the man._

  
“Oh Dameron. You fucking idiot, why?”

Kayly was looking at him with an expression almost of mingled anger and pity. To Portia's surprise she said nothing else but only held out her hand.

  
Poe Dameron removed the mod.

For an instant all she had was access to the room's surveillance again, and then Kayly reattached the connection.

 

“Don’t be angry Kayly, it’s alright,” Portia told her, “The Commander meant no harm. He simply had a question that could not wait and we had a brief talk."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	25. No Place Like Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Looking back to Bodhi and the Ea kid's return to Ea on the Esperanza. Portia makes it clear there is one more barrier to get through in the form of the First Order ship and escorts. Converstions are shouted from one end of the ship to the other.
> 
> Bodhi regretfully remembers the last time he saw Luke Skywalker and the ways in which his old friend had changed, and not.
> 
> Portia uses them to take out a couple of TIE fighters and Kayly, fighter pilot that she is, gets to shoot some stuff. Bodhi drops Kayly in the North and speeds to help Galen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pulling them plot threads together eventually.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_There was a symmetry to it, anyway._

 

Someone with Galen Erso's voice was telling him about a plan that sounded really dangerous.

 

"Portia, what do you mean? “.. so we read as debris?" he asked.

_She was going to say that he knew perfectly well what she meant._

 

[“Bodhi, I am extremely confident you know what I mean.”]

_Yes, but I was hoping I was wrong._

 

“Kayly," he called out, “buckle in hard and be ready. I'm cutting all power on the instant we exit light-speed, I’ve set a battery feed for your targeting computer but once we drop there’ll be no additional power to the cannons. However much charge you have when I hit the kill switch is all you’ve got to work with.”

"Mierda," he heard her mutter over the comm in the gun turret, "Whose idea was this?"

"Whose do you think?"

“Can she at least tell me what's waiting out there?"

[“Tell her there will be First Order support cruiser and two fighter escorts. It seems like a lot but I honestly think they have more ships available than they know what to do with and they are just sending them out to log flight hours. I will take care of the cruiser, but if you can take out one or both fighters our security situation improves dramatically. I can bring you out close to one at least. Kayly will have to make the judgement on the second. I understand she got very high scores.”]

_Ea must be in a sticky spot or Portia wouldn’t be using them this way, she’d have just let Esperanza wait as planned and brought them in after it was safe._

This must be a situation that had to be solved with guns and they must be the only guns she had access to.

He passed her message on to Kayly and called back to Ava and Pavy in the back.

They were all going to need to buckle tight for weightlessness and mask up. _Poor kids._

“Ava, use the yellow air mask, it’s smaller.”

 

 

  
Portia was asking him to go into dead fall as they came out of lightspeed. That meant cutting not just all engine power but internal gravity and most life support. With the hull intact they’d hold a little heat and air for several minutes but all of them should get breathing gear on. He’d put the heaters on high and nudged up the oxygen mix for as long as he could just to build up a cushion.

_Hopefully no one had eaten much in the last twelve hours._

  
He would have to manually set Esperanza to drop out at the exact coordinates that Portia gave him. If he did it right, unaided physics would then, _please Force_ , take them where they needed to be. Communication could only be through the ear comm because that supposedly couldn’t be picked up by any tech still existing.

 

  
_What was it Portia had told him years ago? Except possibly by the Jedi or the Sith?_

 

He had laughed at the time because he’d thought he hadn’t known any Jedi.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
The last time he’d seen Luke Skywalker had been just after the Surrender.

Bodhi skipped many of the commemoration ceremonies but went to a small memorial service held for General Crix Mandine on Corellia. He remembered it clearly because it was one of the last times he wore his dress uniform.

  
Skywalker had approached him as people milled around after the speeches.

Bodhi’d been talking to Antilles and it almost took a full second for him to even recognize the Commander.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t in uniform, several people weren’t.

_There were people who took it right off when official word of the “Imperial Instruments of Surrender and the Galactic Concordance” was broadcast over the temporary base at Nakadia. Some of them just handed their clothes to the nearest officer and walked away in their thermals._

 

  
Skywalker had started wearing a black or black and gold undesignated uniform after Hoth anyway. No service patches or rank were visible except in the flight jacket he threw over it when he flew with Flight Command, the way he had at Jakku and Varnos,

_The Commander was assigned mostly off-books black ops after Endor, or so gossip held. He ran missions with Pathfinders but answered to Organa only._

Now he was wearing an undyed tunic and leggings and a long brown cloak over it…. _cut like the robes of the monks of the Great Temple, though a different color, which gave Bodhi a very strange feeling_. A light saber hung unconcealed from his belt.

  
“Bloody hell, Luke,” Antilles said, “going straight to the next project I see. Decided that a knit jumper that said “Jedi Knight” was too subtle?”

“You know what they say Wedge, dress for the job you want not the job you just left.”

Antilles burst out laughing.

_Skywalker's sunny looks had always made his flashes of dry wit a surprise._

 

Even though these were all people Bodhi Rook wanted to see, and was glad to talk to, conversation in those days was already becoming a problem for him, as were crowds.

_Questions like “Where will you go? What will you do now?” were painful and awkward for almost everyone there. Most people were avoiding them, answering with platitudes or outright lying._

  
Bodhi tried to excuse himself and slip out after a few handshakes.

 

“Rook, wait,” Skywalker said as he moved toward the door, laying his right hand…. _beautiful work, just like Bodhi’s own, but without the bio seaming along the skin-grafts. You couldn’t tell even if you knew. Skywalker’s prosthetic was the whole hand from above the wrist down_.…on his arm.

“I wanted to say…I heard about Sergeant Tonc and I’m sorry. He was a hero among heroes.”

“Yes. Thank you, sir.” Bodhi’s voice sounded stilted, even to his own ears.

Skywalker smiled.

“The son of bitch taught me every obscenity I know. I cussed like a little farm boy until I went on patrol with him and got schooled. The guy was an artist.”

Even Bodhi had to laugh then and Skywalker patted his shoulder.

 

“Bodhi. Take care of yourself. Don’t….don’t lose touch.”

“The same to you, Commander….I mean Luke.”

Skywalker smiled again. “Hey,” he said, “It took the whole war but you finally called me Luke.”

 

He looked at Bodhi differently then, serious again “If it’s not too personal, and please say if it is, but I always meant to ask you about that earring you wear…”

_Bodhi had still worn it all the time in those days, even though the voice had been silent since Endor, whether out of habit or loneliness or some hope that he hadn’t quite given up yet._

“I never noticed it until, Endor I guess, but I always wondered, is it a Jedhan heirloom?” Luke Skywalker made it sound as if this were ordinary small talk, as if they were still young pilots on Echo Base, but of course it wasn't. Skywalker was Command, maybe something more than Command.

  
Bodhi hated himself for the little warning bell that went off in his head, but these were not his secrets to reveal.

If Portia wanted to do business with the Jedi again she was more than capable of finding them herself.

_Can you lie to a Jedi knight? The old stories said you couldn’t, but obviously the old stories had been wrong._

  
“No,” he said, breathing the way Cassian had taught him, evenly and in the middle of the sentences, “It was a….loan from a friend….I don’t know when I’ll get a chance to give it back but…..maybe someday.”

“Well, I hope you can,” Skywalker said, nodding conversationally. “I hope that works out….anyway, I’ve always admired it. Goodbye Bodhi.”

“Goodbye Luke.”

 

As Bodhi turned to leave he looked back and added, moved by something he couldn’t quite be sure of, “May the Force of others be with you.” Then he hurried out.

 

If Skywalker said anything in return he  didn’t hear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Portia told him the coordinates. He punched them in and re-checked.

 

 _Breathe._ “Everybody ready?” he called back. Paave and Ava lifted joined hands.

“Check,” Kayly said over the in-ship audio.

He would not hear from her again until he powered back up.

  
The brilliant light of hyper-space streaked past them in endless ribbons, as he raised his hand over his head, fingers on the kill-switch.

  
[“Three seconds Bodhi.”]

“Ok. On… three…two…one.”

[“Now.”]

  
The stars resolved into beautiful painful points of light around them as Bodhi Rook violated every instinct he had and killed his own ship.

 

 

 

 

_______________________________

 

 

  
Kaylyra Andor ran the various maths in her head as she adjusted her breathing mask.

_Holy screaming hell she wished she had an astromech._

Two First Order fighters and a cruiser….Portia would  "handle" the cruiser.

_Her orders were to disable or destroy one or both fighters, within a tiny window of opportunity before all of them froze in the cold vacuum of space thank you very fucking much Portia. 70 seconds maybe._

 

  
_Esperanza would be in unarrested free fall. However they dumped in was how they would fly_

_Depending on the angle she might not be spinning she came out but it would be soon after._

_As soon as the cannons fired the ship would move._

_They would have no shields so debris trajectory hella mattered._

 

  
She glanced down at the light of the cannon power grid. 130% charge.

 

 

Bodhi’s voice over the comm.

“Three…two…one.”

  
The universe was back.

 

Kayly felt the gravity cut off but the straps held her and the magnets in her palm-gloves kept her hands weighted on the firing controls.

The whole scene was laid out in front of her like a training holo.

 

  
A First Order SJFS Utility Cruiser loomed below her, square-bridged and flat.

Circling like bats were TIE/vn space superiority fighters. One rose up between her and the ship the other just to be glimpsed out and in front.

This was not a firefight, not an attack simulation.

It was already turning cold but she couldn't let that panic her.

 

_I see them, but they don’t see me. She reminded herself. We’re junk to them until we move._

_Make yourself take one of those precious seconds, slow it down and think, Joma would have told her._

Now the TIEs began to move, up and around and out from the cruiser. Toward her. 

_Investigating?_

 

A fair amount of junk was in outer lunar orbit above Ea at any given moment but maybe a dead mostly intact shuttle was a weird thing to see in a debris field.

_Were they suspicious, curious or just bored?_

 

Everything was in motion but the nearest TIE was fixing itself relative to her now.... _moving in for a peek?_

His buddy was holding off but staying in position relative to his partner.

 

 _Thanks,_ Kayly thought, _you just set me up an almost fixed shot_.

_If you'd just stayed in guard formation with your cruiser and let me slide past this would be much harder, like firing from a speeder in motion at a target moving the other way._

 

 

The display light was dark, but she’d had 130%, she knew. Just over full power for one shot and 30% for another.

Kaylyra Andor remembered her first fighter test and smiled even as the ice crystals started forming from the condensation on her mask.

_I can get them both._

She lit the targeting computer up on battery and fired at a wide 30%, lightly clipping the near TIE and sending it spinning, just enough to bring it between her and the second fighter, fast turning to line up on the power signature it was just this instant reading from the “debris”.

Again instantly at 100%.

Only the first TIE took the direct hit, but it’s fiery explosion took out its partner. Two for one. A bank shot.

_Fuck you pals, my Papa taught me this on a hillside with a gun and two pieces of wood when I was thirteen._

 

 

 

 

“Kayly! Stay put. Hang on!” Bodhi's voice.

Lights and power were back on. She felt her own weight again and Bodhi was firing the engines to turn the Esperanza hard.

As the gunner seat swung wildly she caught sight of the blue and white marvel of Ea filling the window of the cannon turret above her. It was something she had never really seen from space before, at least not with her own eyes.

Home.

 

 

  
___________________

 

 

 

 

  
[“NOW”] Galen Erso’s voice filled his head and his fingers hit the cold switch. The Engines fired as Portia fed him a set of coordinates. Straight and fast toward the planet’s surface.

[“Bodhi, I am bringing your ship in around the North polar region in the lunar shadow to get her out of sight. The cruiser believes itself to be in the middle of a debris storm that has taken out it’s fighters. They will make the jump to light speed immediately in an attempt to save themselves.”]

“You’re letting them go?”

[“They will be suffering considerable damage to scanning and communications systems and, of course lose both fighters and all three ground teams but yes, we are letting them go. This ship will return to the First Order with a self-excusing and garbled tale of this planet as a dangerous, unlucky place. There may be a few demotions and executions but High Command will overall be satisfied with the performance of the automated navigation beacons they have successfully set up. The loss of a couple of ships and a few dozen techs and troopers will seem a small price to pay for  having washed their hands of this tricky and unprofitable little corner of space for another thirty years.”

_The General had given them all a mission. Lighthouse was operational again._

 

Bodhi shivered, even as he could feel the heat seeping back into the cockpit cabin, and pulled off the breathing mask. Behind him in the cabin with Ava and Paave he could hear Kayly, moving around, talking to them reassuringly.

She must have stupidly crawled out of the gunners port and down the access ladder against his order. As he turned the ship hard he heard something heavy fall and slide across the floor of the bay.

“Son of a bitch!”

The “something” was Kayly.

_Force! She sounded like her mother sometimes._

 

“Get buckled back there you idiot, this will be steep!”

 

“Jyn, Cassian?” Bodhi asked Portia, saving his breath while pulling at the controls.

This angle and speed was going to get toasty but the shields were holding.

 

[“Cassian is working at securing the interior of his platform. There may be some resistance. Jyn is at the North. The situation there is still active. Galen’s station is secure but we have no confirmation on his safety, his team is concerned that he has not made visual contact.I have control of all three platforms. They are hideous, by the way.”]

They were slowing now, descending in atmosphere into what seemed like foul weather at the Northern Pole.

A soft sound came from the back of voices talking and Ava crying.

 

 

“Where should we go Portia?”

Winds were buffeting around them.

[“Jyn will have access to a ship at the North, shortly, we hope but we still have First Order personnel active there. Cassian and Conn have Guardian. Perhaps swing over Jyn and be prepared to drop some personnel or equipment to assist if you can do it without being seen and then head South to check on Galen. I will message you as I know more.”]

Bodhi was dropping operational forces in theatre and setting up a rescue run…. _familiar, too familiar_.

 

 

“Kayly,” he called back, “what do we have for portable armament?”

She was unbuckling and scrambling now, probably to the storage compartment.

“In here, the boxes of EL-16s, the EL-16HFE and the big-ass launcher,” she yelled in answer. “Everything else is down in…”

“Grab a 16H and the big gun!”

 

Bodhi looked at the cold winds buffeting them as they broke through cloud cover. He caught a glimpse of sea ice and the coast. Portia was feeding coordinates to the nav and turning them inland.

“What’s the ground temp where Jyn is?

“-28.89 °C”

 

“Kayly, dress warm. I’m taking you to help your mother.”

 

 


	26. Rebel Intelligence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaylyra Andor relives the trauma of learning about the First Order's assault on the New Republic and near destruction of the Resistance also recalling how she came to propose her plan to act as a spy/saboutour in the war zone and her father's emotional reaction. An escape is arranged from the Skylar hotel tower and two pilots say goodbye unsure how or if they might ever meet again. Rose Tico and C'ai Threnalli anxiously wait for Poe Dameron. BB-8's faith in his friend is unshakable.. Poe is reunited with his team and escapes. Kayly and Portia continue to their next mission and Portia proposes an additional errand to fulfill a promise she has made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Necesitamos caminar a través de la oscuridad. = We need to walk through the darkness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kaylyra would never have asked Poe Dameron whose voice he heard when he put on Portia's link.

This was the kind of thing, she knew now, that demanded boundaries

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before she left home Bodhi Rook had walked her through Guardian, showing her where everything was…. _carefully explaining all the engineering spec., the little quirks._... “just in case” as he said.

As they sat in the cockpit, quietly alone after running through the auto-set sequences, he had sighed deeply then reached up and taken the mod off of his left ear. He looked down, holding the clip for a moment as if weighing the tiny thing then taken her hand and laid it on her palm, pressing her fingers around it.

  
They had all, she, he, Portia and her parents made an agreement about how this was going to work. Portia would go with her to be her lifeline but they hadn’t worked out the small detail of which mod she would take. Bodhi had decided on his own to give her his.

It didn't really matter of course the two were were identical, Kayly knew that, but she felt honored anyway. This was  a sign of trust it seemed , like the passing of a lamp or maybe just the sharing of a burden.

  
“I can’t tell you it will ever get easier,” he said, “but it does get less….unexpected.”

 

She nodded. Then she put the earring on.

 

 

“What does it mean?” she asked, grateful beyond telling that Bodhi was the only one there the first time she heard Portia speak to her through it. She wouldn't have been able to look at her father without crying.

“You could make yourself crazy, wondering about that,” Bodhi said, “I think....at least what I remind myself constantly anyway is that it isn’t a choice and it may not be about the voice....the person... at all really. None of us gets to pick what part of our brain which memories get stored in.”

He smiled ruefully, “I suppose it’s a good reminder about how we have no control over who who affects our journey.”

[“I really wish it didn’t work this way, it just seems so needlessly stressful,” Portia had said in the old spy’s voice.]

“Yeah. No argument there,” Kayly said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
As they had huddled in that comm station at HarborTown, listening to Portia relay it all, the destruction of the Hosnian System, the Resistance’s gallant fight back, a  successful but horrific assault on Starkiller base,  Kayly had felt her heart pounding so loudly it seemed the others must surely have heard it.

Hours of helplessness passed while the First Order’s invasion fleet of massive ships poured out of the Unknown Regions all bearing down on whatever was left of the Republic.

The breaking point came when Portia told them about the dying cry for help from the last  Rebel survivors on Crait.

She'd lost her mind a little bit  and tried to run to Guardian, still covered with tarps up on the bluffs above the town. Galen had quickly caught up with her despite her head start. 

 He didn’t even really fight back, not 100%, just kept getting up to grab her in a clinch hold from behind even as she’d hit him hard and broke loose again and again.

  
_When had he gotten so strong?_

"No, Kayly," he kept repeating, not yelling, not angry, just over and over again, “No.”

When he finally pinned her back the last time both of them were gasping and Galen’s lip was bleeding from an elbow strike.

“It’s too far, Kayly,” he said, against her ear, “Please…you won’t make it….there isn’t time.”

_She remembered then where she was, who he was and how much she must be hurting him. The fight went out of her and she folded up like a broken thing onto the dune grass crying too hard to even stand._

 

He was right, of course he was right.  She was still enough of a pilot to know that.

_Even if Portia would let her through it was more than five hours back to D’Qar with even minimal safety jumps. The whole First Order Armada lay between here and there. Who the fuck even knew where Crait was? She couldn't save anybody. It was already too late._

  
Galen sat with her at the foot of the bluffs for what seemed like hours until Tom and Mary came with the Ladies.

When she went down with them into the town, numb and leaning on her brother, both of them limping, they must have been a sight.

Down at Lissa'swith the doors closed Macha brought her a sticky sweet-bitter drink of something and Kayly downed it without protest.

A decision had already started to form in her mind, as she lay there in the foggy dark of the room above the pub, listening to the muffled voice of her brother downstairs "explaining" to Old Markey and the others. 

 

_War had come again, he'd told them. Ea had closed herself in just in time. They were safe for now but surrounded and their only allies had just been defeated._

 

 

When Portia finally gave them a two hour all-clear the next day they flew Guardian quickly back to Nexa and home. 

 

Or rather, Galen flew Guardian. He'd  been sitting in the pilot seat when Kayly boarded. 

"What are you doing?" she'd asked.

Her brother only looked at her steadily, calm and immovable. "I'll fly," he said.

 

Kayly did not argue with him for the same reason she had swallowed the sedative when the now-Eldest lady of HarborTown had handed it to her.

  
She knew she was going to need her strength.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bodhi had been in the tower beside Mama and Papa when she came to tell them, all of them sitting on the old “lessons” benches. On the table lay a data pad that no one could bear to look at for long. They watched the data feed in teams now.

Beri and Bes had been sitting at the table beside Galen. Portia appeared standing beside the spiral staircase wearing the image of her long-dead friend Jula.

The woman’s hands were folded and she looked at them all with a kind of cool pity and concern.

Even now Kayly couldn’t remember the exact words she’d used, up in the second level of Portia’s Tower, only that she had told them she was going back and stubbornly begun outlining the beginnings of her plan.

 

  
She would go out by herself, she told them. She was still a soldier of the Resistance, even if she was the only one left.

The rest of them had their orders from the General, she knew. Lighthouse needed to stand and Ea had to be protected, there was no question of that.

If she went alone at least she would endanger no one else.

A good enough pilot to get in and out of almost any place on whatever type of ship could be borrowed or stolen, she would first try to make contact with any of the Resistance fleet that had escaped Crait. If Organa and her few remaining soldiers were gone or, as seemed more likely, dead she would look for whatever remained of the New Republic. Across a hundred worlds someone must have escaped the first rush of slaughter and they had to find them before the First Order could cut everyone off and hunt them all down. Mon Cala, Lothal, Coruscant….if there weren’t underground groups already there there would be soon.

Kayly would recon places Portia could not, set up sabotage, liaison and set up communication lines with whoever she could find still able to fight.

It wasn’t enough for Portia to gather data, she told them, there had to be someone to use that Intelligence. This had to be done now, while there were still survivors to find and before the First Order could fully consolidate power.

She could do these things, her and maybe no one else.

If Organa or anyone one from Base had survived they would know her and hopefully trust her. At the same time she would be an almost untraceable ghost to the First Order because no record of her existed anywhere they could reach. Even the Resistance hadn’t really known who she was or where she was from, except for Organa and Ackbar.

 

Bodhi looked at her sharply.

_He had said very little so far, only hugged her when she came up._

_Beri seldom left his side._

_Kayly knew what he must be thinking about but that old man on Pendarr would never tell a soul, even in the unlikely event he was still alive, and Dameron, Joma and Connix were almost surely dead._

 

She pressed on, heedless.

“I know it will be hard, but I have to do this. I’m going.”

 _Force, she’d never argued with them like this, ever._ _But even so she thought it would be her mother she’d have to fight the hardest, that’s what she’d braced herself for._

 

Something she’d said turned Papa toward her then in a cold fury.

 

“You’re wrong.”

He stood up stepped very close, as if they were the only people in the room, his voice knife hard and deadly quiet.

“You think you have even the slightest idea what you’re talking about? I promise you, you don’t. It isn’t enough to know how to fight in the daylight. It isn’t anywhere near enough. This is the shadows.”

It was worse than seeing him in the bell-tower at RiverTown, worse than those long-ago shooting lessons.

_For just a second it was as if she didn’t know him._

  
Mama had put her hand on his shoulder. “Cassian,” she said, quietly, then again. “Cassian.”

  
But he went on as if he could not hear her.

“If you commit yourself this way you will not get to choose the terms, and you had better be prepared to commit yourself totally or you’ll die….worse than die …you’ll fail. Even if you find support and you may not but even if you do you will still be alone and every decision you make will risk real lives, lives you can’t see and lives you can, which, believe me, is much much worse.”

  
“Cassian,” Mama stepped between him and Kayly then and laid both hands on his arms.

That was enough maybe, finally Papa looked down and seemed to see her.

“Cassian, stop,” she was saying, “Stop now.”

  
He bent and rested his forehead against hers. They stood that way for long minutes.

 

“I’m here,” she heard her mother say softly, “I’m here. Walk away. Go outside, walk it off. Let me talk to her.”

 

He breathed slowly in and and out.

Then her father walked to the stairs and the outside stairway without looking back or talking to anyone else. It was late afternoon and a red-skied sunset was visible through Portia’s “window.”

 

Kayly told herself she was standing her ground, tried to ignore the feeling that she was going to be sick. She would not back down.

  
“Kaylyra,” her mother had said, “come with me now, we’re going to talk upstairs. Everyone else, please wait here for a few minutes.”

As they walked up the stairs to the fourth level Mama paused and it seemed for all the world as if she and Portia shared a glance. The eternally young dark-haired woman nodded her head.

Somewhere she was talking to Papa.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
“Are you ok?” was all she’d said, when Dameron handed her back the mod.

 

He’d laughed, sitting on that ridiculously pretty green velvet chair in a white bathrobe with his boots in his hand.

“Andor, that’s the damn dumbest question anyone has ever asked in the history of the galaxy. No….and yes. I’m ok.”

 

 _[“I’ll explain it all to you later Kayly. You and the Commander should get yourselves organized. Cleaning staff shift change will commence in 34 minutes and I am slicing into the cleaning and maintenance division assignments and shifting the grid a little. It should look like a transposition error and cover the presence of two extra humans in the service transport lifts_.”]

 

She gave him a Kreon-Jemcon Facilities and Operations uniform, a loose blue jumpsuit with numerous recognition and identity badges and sensor threads woven right into the cloth.

“Get dressed Poe. We have 33 minutes to get ourselves out of here.”

He nodded and stood, tucking the clothes under one arm he reached out and caught her by the waist as she passed around toward the little furry divan, to dress herself.

Pulling her close he kissed her quickly, as if on impulse.

It surprised her although later she couldn't think why it should have.

 _Maybe because you always kissed him first?_ Kayly thought, _except for the lift. Or b_ _ecause it’s a normal thing to do when two people who've been close part, and nothing about this was normal"?_

 

The question must have shown on her face.

 

“I may not get a chance later,” he explained, “The storm is over and we have to leave the shelter, right? Thank you Andor.”

_What was she sending him back to?_

It was like the old song Papa sang to them when they were very little and afraid of something.

_"Necesitamos caminar a través de la oscuridad."_

_Each of us in different directions and we can only hope that there will be light left when we come through._

_Only she wasn’t going to tell the poor bastard that. He’d been through hell. He already knew._

Instead she made herself smile like a normal woman.

“Go shave for fuckssake Dameron.”

 

 

 

_______________

 

 

 

  
The Kreon-Jemcon Facilities and Operations was a highly secure privately contracted firm used by Essos to handle all cleaning and laundry services in the Skylar complex. Like most such services they were 90% performed on site by specialized droids but every crew contained a number of human worker/supervisors. Partly this was to meet the needs of guests like the Droxx whose religious and cultural strictures required specialized cleaning of eating and drinking areas by non-mechanicals but mostly it was to maintain internal security by hand-clearing the droids memory downloads at the end of each shift. Very few secrets are hidden from cleaning services in a hotel and discretion was the Skylar hallmark.

“What Happens in a Skylar Guest Suite Stays in a Skylar Guest Suite” was one of the chain’s slogans.

  
That said, even commercial Kaikielius was not immune to the chaos rippling through the galaxy, despite the Commercial Council’s assurances that there was no need to panic and that old treaties with the Imperial Remnant worlds would be honored by the First Order.

_Neutrality had kept the planet safe in the last war, everyone said, as a secure business haven where the Imperial elites, Outer World cartels and unaligned commodities dealers could all hide funds and investments. The safest thing to do was go about business as usual, the news reports instructed._

  
Even so, some people were quietly fleeing....mostly staff with family or connections in the Hosnian System. Schedules were being juggled to accommodate the no-shows. Nervous supervisors were making mistakes.

When extra human staff from Tower Two showed up on a crew cleared for the early shift on Tower Three it was annoying but not entirely unexpected. The workers were ordered to return to Two on the next shuttle and the scheduling mistake was quickly corrected.

 

 

 

  
_At the exact time, 07:00, a Security droid escort arrived at to escort Kestral Therese Willix, Visual Data Tech/Executive Sales -Level 2 and her estranged partner Jovan Calder to the Command Center to pay their fines for Public Disruption and Unauthorized Trespass a code scarlet virus alert went off inside the main data frame._

 

 

 

  
Within seconds a series of distinctly different viral programs began to appear within each of the six back-up servers. Every automated system in the main capitol financial and data company areas had to be shut down as a precaution against the sabotage spreading. Chaos broke out.

 

Reconstructed records would later indicate that a minor financial hack from a decades unused anonymous legacy account had occurred several hours earlier. This was determined by investigators to have likely been a trial ballon for the major cyber-assault that followed and quickly forgotten. Significant amounts of financial data was briefly lost but swiftly recovered....mostly. Vast sections of the shipping and personal record files of thousands of inter-galactic companies were hacked. Firewalls were activated within seconds although financial and shipping data from besieged  Chandrilla remained scrambled for several days. This led investigators to suspect that off-work Chandrillans may have been involved. The most critical immediate danger arose when planetary satellite systems winked in and out. The data corruption was feared to have spread to space traffic control as the towers and tracking were left nearly blind for almost two hours. Fortunately manual back up systems held and no accidents resulted.

A facsimile of order was fully restored within six hours and the Commercial Council was able to largely conceal the extent of the losses from the First Order, never admitting that the famous banks and data storage vaults of Kaikielius could not ever be quite sure what or who they had lost in those critical minutes.

 

 

 

 

  
_By the time the poor Security CC-3S1 came back online it had quite forgotten what it had come to Tower Three to do._

 

___________________

 

 

 

 

 

Huddled in a container carrier at the Commercial Transport Yard, Rose Tico struggled to keep her mind on what she was doing and only that.

_Talking herself aloud through the steps of changing the cargo manifests and re-pressurizing and gravity-setting the cargo containers within the bay so they didn’t basically all die was actually very calming._

C’ai’s fourteenth cousin had left the tow-ship right where he’d said and the tall Abednedo had worked his way up into the pilot seat and was running the checks.

 

 

“Something’s wrong. All hell is breaking loose back in the Commercial Platforms,” he called down to Rose from the cockpit above her.

“What do you mean?” she said.

 

_No, no, no, no, no._

 

“We’re ok, I think, they don't see us” he said, “Tower is saying it’s some kind of data breach.” He looked down the ladder at her, accusingly.

“It wasn’t me!” she said, defensively.

She turned and looked at the little white and orange astromech, rolling back and forth in front of the closed side hatch.

_Oh no._

 

“BB-8, did you do something?”

*no. carrying the data files. waiting for Poe.*

“Fucking hell,” C’ai said, shifting to zip up the too-small commercial flight jacket that had been left on the seat. “Now they’re saying we have to fly out on audio-instructions from the tower or abort until the systems are restored....12 hours max. they say. They must be trying trying to clear the air-strips ahead of the systems shutting down. Rose. We are up three in the rotation for expedited take-off.  We have to close the hatches and go now or we may not get out at all.

“No!” she said, “Poe’s not back. We can’t.”

_She was not going back to tell the General that they’d lost Poe. She was not telling Finn that._

 

C'ai Threnalli, one of the last six pilots of the Resistance… _.maybe the last five_ ….looked down at her in silence. Abednedi always looked sad.

“Rose,” he said, slowly, hollowly, “We have our orders.”

Poe is his friend, his Commander.

_No, please no. Not again. No more._

 

*…Poe is coming…*

Rose knelt down by the droid.

“We have to buckle in, BB-8,” she said, gently, _cheerfully she hoped_. “We’re going to take off soon. I’m going to….” _she had to not cry…did it bother droids if you cried?….she’d never noticed that it did but maybe BB-8 was different…screw that, BB-8 was totally different…Oh Force_ …

“It’s ok,” she lied, “We’re going to back to Rey and Finn.”

*..the big sister/lighthouse/old wise system said Poe was safe…Poe is coming…*

_What?_

 

“Rose,” the pilot called down again, “We have to move up after the next two. Tell Connix and Mere to buckle in and stay still until we’re up.”

 

  
Suddenly there was a thump on the side. Rose was so startled she shrieked. Down in the lower compartment someone else did the same.

 

_Probably Mere, nothing startled Kaydel Ko Connix, she’d been with the General too long._

 

*!!!!!!!!Poe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*

BB-8 was bouncing up and down

C’ai must have cracked the cockpit window because a voice from outside was shouting over the engine noise.

“Some friends you are! A guy shows up 45 damn minutes early and you’re leaving without him?”

  
“Open the hatch!” Rose shouted, mostly to herself because she was already doing it.

  
*!!!!!!!!!!!!!Poe. Poe. Poe.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*

The small side access hatch opened with a hiss and Poe Dameron, quickly climbed inside.

“Get that door closed,” C’ai yelled down, “We’re up next, we’ve got to move into take-off sequence,” but he huffed, happily “Glad to see you Poe..”

Poe couldn’t answer because he was hugging BB-8. Rose Tico was laughing in near tears and pushing him, “Buckle in!” she said, “Fast you idiot, there’s no time.”

  
They had to strap into the misery seats on the insides of the container tanks because there were no proper chairs except the one in the cockpit. Poe managed to get himself buckled but BB-8 was too slow and rolled hard back across the floor until he magneted himself to the wall.

It wasn’t comfortable, but C’ai took them up.

Rose reached across, as the Gs pressed her back to squeeze Poe’s hand.

“I thought we’d lost you,’ she said.

“You did great Rose. You got everyone out. We’re better off today than we were yesterday…….ooff….fuck! C’ai this is awful…what are you doing?”

  
“Backseat fly me and you walk, Poe” the pilot said and closed the ladder hatch.

 

 

A bumpy few minutes later they were out of atmosphere and a few long stomach-lurching jerks after they were coming in to dock at the refuse-reclamation platform where the Falcon would come to claim them in a few hours.

Everyone unbuckled then and a bedraggled Connix and Mere crawled out to join them in the upper  container.

Mere laughed, “Don’t scare the droid like that again Dameron,” he said, but Konnix walked unsteadily over the curved floor and threw her arms around Poe’s neck without a word.

 _We are too few now._ Rose thought. _This is going to get harder and harder._

“Survival is victory right now,” Emmen had said to the General.

“Better off today than we were yesterday” Dameron had said.

 _One more day. Finn was waiting. Finn and the others. They hadn’t lost anyone and they’d bought another day_ she told herself.

 

  
“What the hell, Dameron” Connix was saying. “Did you shave? And why do you smell so damn good?”

 

 

______________

 

 

 

 

 

  
Guardian got out slightly ahead of the system shut-down on the private space-port platform. It helped knowing the sequence of the cascade breakdown in advance.

  
[“That went about as well as could be expected”] Portia said over the ship’s comms.

Kayly broke down laughing, there were some times when her old teacher was funny on purpose and many times when she was not.

“I am going to assume you are talking about the sabotage and agree, ” Kayly said. “Now we go set the same bug in at the Maxilla Relay platform.’

[“Yes. it should look completely convincing for the same “virus” to have accidentally spread there. With the right timing this will help hide the fuel depot transfers and enable most of the privately id coded transport ships on Chandrilla to disappear from Central Tracking. It will take weeks for the First Order to re-structure the data and in that amount time many people can get off unseen, not everyone but many.”]

“We have to try.”

[“Chandrilla will be risky Kayly.”]

“I know. When can I get a secure drop to Mama and Papa?”

[“Seven hours”]

“Ok. I’m going to try to get some sleep until then.”

[“Kayly. After we do what we can at Chandrilla I am proposing another stop.”]

“What? Where? You were the one who said we had to lay low after that, that we needed to avoid pattern to stay off their algorithmic searches.”

[“This should be suitably random. It has no strategic importance.”]

“Where do you want to go?”

[“We need to find a man on Lah’mu and see if we can persuade him to come home with us.”]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah. I think we're going to see Kes Dameron again.
> 
> A bit boilerplate in places I fear but I have had a section bouncing about for some time about Kayly coming to her father and saying she wants to be a spy and Cassian going off on his beloved daughter. I can only imagine his gut reaction to his children's embrace of their family's legacy being guilt. Jyn, of course sees these things differently and she and Portia will work hard get him through this. 
> 
> Also caught the CC'd option on The Last Jedi and was deeply moved by how much BB-8 just jumps up and down yelling Poe's name.


	27. On Our Knees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Davits Draven and Dr. Ty Thorn hide in a wilderness area on Pendarr, a rough life indeed for two very old people looking for a way to hold off despair and fight one last battle.
> 
> Draven remembers Ashoka Tano and two different views on the Galactic Civil Wars, one that of a former Jedi seeing a battle between the Dark and Light side of the Force and one of a field soldier fighting against a powerful and oppressive enemy with nothing but the strength of ordinary men and women, and the conflict this dichotomy sometimes produced.
> 
> He recalls a meeting with Luke Skywalker, as well as how he and Thorn first heard of the First Order attack. Trying to get news from the outside Galaxy without exposing themselves Draven rigs up a receiver that brings him a message he had not expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot let Draven go, I love this old man too much.
> 
>  
> 
> Air ar casan, no air ar glùinean gus am bi am bàs a 'tighinn oirnn = On our feet, or on our knees until our death is on us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He thought of Tano often these days. There was no accounting for it, except that he found himself with a lot of time on his hands to mull over the early days of the Resistance.

 

She had vanished sometime after the first siege at Lothal.

_KIA officially but he had never really quite believed that._

  
In the end they had each run their own operations with only occasional overlap. With the Alliance scattered in tiny cells across a dozen worlds, caravanned in a hundred ships, the right hand was safer not knowing what the left hand was doing. Any of them could be captured at any time.

He had respected her unreservedly, acknowledged her seniority, but they had so seldom agreed on anything in those early days that Aerin Cracken had often wound up in the role of mediator.

Perhaps it was unavoidable, their backgrounds were as different as could have been possible for two people who’d both served in all the same armies.

  
His path had been a time-honored one for younger siblings in the Draven family. A military education at the Pendarr Academy and a commission in the Army of the Republic. An ill-timed bout of pneumonia contracted during officer training had caused him to miss the first round of Infantry assignment and rather than resubmit after cleared by Medical he’d somehow he’d taken an Intelligence placement and stayed…partly out of stubbornness perhaps, although he liked to think that even then he knew where his talents lay.

His father had made it no secret that he thought it a less courageous career path.

Davits Draven returned from the Battle at Sullest to find two messages waiting, one informing him of his first field commission, and another from his cousin Phillip telling him that his father had died quietly three days before. Unknown to Phillip and the house droids, Father had stopped taking his cardiac medication a year before, presumably about the time Senior Commander Nora Draven had been killed along with most of her clone brigade at Christophsis.

_That the loss of his favorite child had broken the old man’s spirit didn’t shock Draven as much as the realization that his father had given up, just stopped trying._

_“Air ar casan, no air ar glùinean gus am bi am bàs a 'tighinn oirnn” was the family motto in the old language…all he knew in it truthfully…memorized by them all from childhood. It had been on his twice great-grandmother’s crumbling grave marker and embroidered on a damned pillow the front room._

 

He knew very little of Tano’s personal history other than that she’d been a Togruta orphan “recruited,” as all Jedi were, into the religious orders as a toddler. A lifetime in the Temple trained her as a Padawan and aide to General Kenobi and other Jedi officers. A rising Jedi commander, she’d led a division at Felucia while still a teenager, back when he was an Ensign manning radio-comm stations in claustrophobic shuttle bunkers dropped behind lines.

Some personal crisis of faith caused her to leave the Order before taking her final vows a few years before Order 66. Thus she became one of the few senior Jedi field officers to survive the Purge. Even before Mothma and Ackbar openly declared the Rebellion she was helping the renegades of the Senate lay groundwork for what would become Rebel Intelligence long before there was a fleet or an army.

  
Tano searched for, recruited and, as far as he knew very effectively used, fugitive Jedi adherents for her own operations.

Well and good. It was a vital area of operations and key to Imperial strategy. The Emperor hunted the Jedi elites of Couruscant ruthlessly and the rifling of their temples, training centers and ancient bases for weapons and religious artifacts was whispered to be Lord Vader’s personal portfolio and private obsession.

  
But it had often seemed to him as if they fought different wars, almost in different galaxies.

 

  
Only once had he ever been openly insubordinate.

It had been after Senin-Kashin, after Verujansi III.

Intelligence Command rarely met together in person, for obvious reasons. When he looked back he realized it might have been Tano’s only visit to Base. She had come in with a team needing to be resupplied after a rough mission of her own and they all had a rare face-to-face conference with Command.

Draven came to the barely furnished conference room directly from an agonizing debrief and a tongue-lashing from Medical over the physical and psychological condition of one of his agents recently brought back on from an extended and brutal deep-cover assignment. That stress alone could have accounted for what happened.

Carl Reikken and Admiral Ackbar were counting the tiny new fleet of a hundred stolen X-wings, hard-won but useless without additional fuel.

Missions needed to be set up quickly. Operatives needed get into either Bespin or Kril’Dor asap.

Exhausted he had saluted and moved toward the door only to overhear Tano in mid-conversation with Dodonna, saying something about her “visions,” and using some Jedi metaphor about the Force to frame her concern that some of her personnel were at risk and needed to be “on guard” against falling prey to the influence of “the Dark Side.”

Tano was a dedicated and brilliant officer, a keen tactician. Her teams had worked bravely behind lines and taken losses he knew, although he was not privy to the details and did not expect to be.

She almost certainly didn’t realize how she came off sometimes in those in agonizing days, quoting the wisdom of her beloved “Master Anakin.”

He had probably taken her out of context, and unfairly.

 

 

It had simply struck him like a slap in that instant. He had thought of his own covert agents, unseen obstacles between the Empire and its total victory. None were defrocked Jedi, ex-Padawans or "Force Sensitive"prodigies. None of them would ever skillfully wield a light saber or magically move so much as a spoon. The best of them were refugee kids, escapees from the military colleges, former Separatists, student dissidents, escaped factory workers. Odds were that none of them were sacrificing their minds or souls to gain mystical “Sith” powers. They were dying to defeat an Empire that slaughtered Kashyyk, murdered children, razed cities, looted worlds.

“With all respect ma’am,” he’d turned and snapped, “my people will never have the luxury of wondering where or what the “Dark Side” is, because they set themselves to face it every day. If the “Light” of the Jedi ever returns it will only be because ten thousand unthanked “shadows” fell protecting it.”

Tano had looked up at him, shocked, and in truth he had shocked himself. Aerin had taken him by the arm and moved him out into the corridor.

Draven had braced himself for a reprimand, but it never came.

They were all under tremendous strain, Aerin said, and needed to give each other the space to blow off steam once in a while but Draven needed to step back.

“We are all fighting the same Enemy,” Aerin said, “ on different frontiers perhaps, using different language, different weapons maybe but the same war.”

 

Draven formally apologized to Tano before she left for Manadalore and she graciously accepted. He had been far out of line though and he knew it.

_An hour later he sent an over-stretched Captain Leora Tree and her team into Kril’Dor to try to set up a fuel hijacking by allying undercover with a local smuggler. Two small shipments were rerouted over the next few weeks but in trying for a third something went wrong and Tree and her squad were lost._

_He had no choice after that but to overrule Medical’s recommendation and to send Cassian Andor back in theatre to Bespin._

_Andor went in alone except for his droid, as was his preferred method._

 

The outburst was never spoken of again. Tano “vanished” not long after.

_Dead? On some deep cover mission gone wrong? or gone off to fight her “other”war?_

  
No one told him and he did not ask.

 

Her intelligence files were divided. He combined her notes on “Weapons Projects” pulled from her capture of Dooku’s contacts with his own data and teased out a thread they eventually pursued to a name, Galen Erso.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“General Draven,” the man had said, soft-spoken but confident, “Please excuse me.”

 

 

  
At the official Concordance signing ceremony Draven had stayed in the back with the Intelligence senior staff and turned to leave after the speeches began, now he turned only to find Commander Luke Skywalker unexpectedly beside him.

The Commander had himself been up on the stage earlier, standing in for General Leia Organa at Mothma’s side.

  
_Seventy-two hours earlier Organa had been in labor, though she’d concealed it, through the final stage negotiations on Chandrilla. Minutes after witnessing the signing of the final draft she’d excused herself, walked into the hallway behind the dias and collapsed, delivering a baby boy only an hour later._

Skywalker hadn’t started wearing the Jedi “robes” yet. On that occasion he’d been wearing a simple dark suit and an Alderaanian short coat. The lightsaber had been barely visible underneath.

 

“Flight Commander?” _Why the devil was the man talking to him?_

  
He had seldom spoken to Skywalker outside of a handful of meetings since Endor. Organa had deployed her own missions, as Tano once had, with her own spec ops teams and Skywalker had been her right hand.

He had never asked for details.  It was “need to know” and he frankly didn’t anymore. After Endor he had run only the one deep field operation.

 

 

_Years later as they sat on the sofa and watched Organa’s “Confession” speech from the floor of the Senate, Thorn had turned to him slack-jawed and asked “Twins? Skywalker? Darth fucking Vader? Did you know any of this?” that many things fell into place._

_He had not known then but it occurred to him now that Aerin must have, at least after Endor. Had Mothma known much earlier? Had Tano?_

_All those quotes of “Master Anakin.” Was that why she disappeared?_

 

  

 

Now Skywalker was unaccountably buttonholing him in the back of a crowded hall full of weeping people.

“I’ve never had the chance to say it before, sir, and…well, I’ve learned the future is something we can never count on so I try not to leave anything unsaid anymore.” the younger man held out a hand, his right. …. _Beautiful prosthetic work_ … “Thank you sir.”

Draven shook the hand cautiously.

He liked Skywalker, it was practically impossible not to, especially if you’d been sitting waiting to die on Yavn IV, but the gesture puzzled him.

 _All good luck to you, Master Skywalker_ , he thought, _But don’t thank me. I’m still alive. Most of the people you want to thank died at Scarif._

 

 

  
To fight and oppose the Emperor and his forces, by any and all means;  
To bring about the destruction of the Galactic Empire;  
To refuse any law contrary to the rights of sentient beings;  
To make forever free all beings in the galaxy.  
To these ends, we pledge our property, our honor, and our lives.

   
Nothing in that oath mentioned the redemption of the Jedi Order or putting a lightsaber in anybodies hand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
Still, he thought of Hoth, _often and keenly as the nights grew cold up here in the hills_.

He remembered Vader’s relentless search through that shattered base for one man and one man alone. Hoth had been a catastrophic defeat but had been spared from ending as complete slaughter by that blind need of Sheev Palpatine and his bloodthirsty lieutenant to see the everything terms of symbols. Even then it had seemed to Draven that no one had believed in the myth of some secret transcendently powerful Jedi hero who would rise from hiding to overthrow the wicked Emperor using the “power of the Force” more than Palpatine himself. It was a weakness they had been able to exploit at Endor.

What the Empire believed then must surely be what the cultish First Order believed now. Opportunity lay therein and who would know that better than Organa?

 

 

 

 

  
Thorn protested when he divided the blankets, insisting that, as the person furthest from the fire Draven should get an extra.

“We have to walk down the ridge for supplies tomorrow and if you get cold your leg will be in worse shape,” he said.

“Oh so you’re giving me medical advice now? Would you like me to explain to you how arthritis works again?”

_It would of course be more sensible for him, being the person with unimpaired mobility, to walk down by himself but that was pointless to bring up again._

 

 

 

 

 

He had been standing alone in the kitchen looking at the news alert pop-up screen when the reports came in, terse, disjointed, just a reader from the Pendar Provisional Authority.

 

For an instant he’d had a mad idea of turning off all the comms in the house, just to spare them a few more minutes of knowing… _.idiocy_ ….but the sound of a cane hitting the floor behind him told him it was already too late.

Thorn had heard only the end of the broadcast but it had been enough.

“Hosnian Prime?”

“Yes.” _What could he do? Lie?_

 

“The whole planet?” quietly.

_Not “how?” Not “who?”_

 

“Davits, answer me…”

“The whole system.”

He had expected tears but there were none, really. Only a hand reached out blindly toward him.

They had held each other for a long time in silence until his dear doctor said, “How much time do we have? How long before they come?”

  
Only once had there been a whisper of despair. On that first night, camped in the dark. They had stretched out side by side on thermal pads in an old long-forgotten cave-like sheep shelter his grandfather had dug out. No lights, no fire.

“Mon was lucky,” Thorn said, head on his shoulder in the dark. “I wish I had died before this happened.”

“Me too,” he agreed.

 

  
They moved often but once it was clear after the first several weeks that they were not being searched for they came down to the old unused university research stations.

An old nursery school friend in town did carpentry  work at the agricultural college and had begun leaving supplies in the locked field classrooms.

_Why Thorn should be so surprised he could still pick a lock and disconnect a motion alarm had vaguely nettled him._

How long they could last this way was an open question. Thorn was in pain and barely bothering to lie about it. All either of them wanted was a way to kill just a few more of the enemy or protect a few more of the innocent before they froze to death or broke a bone up there.

 

 

It took them most of a morning to work their way down the ridge to one of the unused seasonal trailer classrooms. Once inside they had again found a cache of food bars, pain meds, fuel cubes and a tiny battery short-use vid-receiver so they could see what was happening on Pendarr at least, a little. 

The First Order was sending propaganda broadcasts of a kind, but so ludicrously produced as to be ignorable. They claimed to have destroyed the Resistance utterly at D’Qar and slaughtered the survivors in space. There was no way to know if any of it was true.

 

_“Do you think that girl ever made it home?” Thorn had asked, huddled in a folding chair after he’d turned the thing off the first time they’d risked it._

_“What girl?” he said, which earned him such a raised eyebrow that he’d had to laugh._

 

The trailers nearest the access road had heat and Net but he would not risk powering up. As the weather got worse, or if either of them got hurt or sick he might have to reconsider, but not yet. He’d begun wiring the little link receivers  together to try and make a proper DIY off-the-grid text screen. Something they could use to hack into off-planet info feeds without going through the main planetary Network. No transmission only to hear some news, however bad.

They sat in the chilly empty room, drank water, refilled their canteens and nibbled quietly.

Then Thorn napped for a while on the industrial carpet while he tinkered, an hour or two’s rest here was safe enough then they’d need to move on.

Two weeks ago he’d found an old-model translator hook-up in an equipment closet in one of the other seasonal fire-watch stations. Now he brushed the spiderwebs off the screen and decided it might be a good time to test his jury-rigged receiver, while Thorn was asleep.

Solar power was kept in these shacks to prevent pipes freezing. With text only he should not be drawing enough to show up on the University grid.

  
He powered up the tiny pad and each of the little links he’d wired to it.

Pendarr Provincal News read across one line as before. Nothing but propaganda and weather.

 _What was that?_ Corellian Broadcast? Good….very good. Traffic control feed but hell, it was something.

 

He upped the power just a hair.

 

….RYGELLIN FREIGHTERS DOCKING @481/TRANSPORT CAFT AT LEVEL THREE DOCKING STA. 4/UNLOAD/CAROSELL 592W excuse me general please don’t be concerned CRAFT AB3 REROUTE…

  
_Son of a bitch._

….MALASTARE BARGE PLATFORM CODE311this may be a shock but we are trying to get assistance to you this is lighthouseUNCOUPLER@C.74 EST.ARRIVAL IN 3/if you receive me please turn off power for three seconds and then reengage at same power levelFIRESUPPRESSION BARGE STAND…

 

He shut down.

_Please don’t wake up Thorn._

_Oh bloody hell._

 

His hands were shaking.

 

Power back up.

 

………KUAT TRANSIT ONoh good a man will try to reach you in seven days at the building you entered three days ago please do not shoot him cassian says you are a very suspicious person his name is doren toncPLATFORM RED F56.9 CLEAR FOR ROUTINEmy name is portia we are planning an extraction disconnect power in five seconds if you are amenableMANTILL REQUESTING CLEARANCE AT LEVEL 1-5 TOWER RESET AT 9.5 ON GREEN LEVEL BARGE TOW NEEDED AT…….

He counted five as carefully as he had ever done so and shut the screen off.

 

“Air ar casan, no air ar glùinean gus am bi am bàs a 'tighinn oirnn.” In bloody-deed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	28. The Children of Heroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A young mother, and former travel agent on Yavin IV, remembers the evacuation of that moon in the hours after the First Order attack. She and her family, neighbors and friends....first and second generation Rebels all....find themselves on Lah'mu, a planet where other refugees sought safety before them but didn't always find it. 
> 
> An unexpected visitor tracks them there looking for one older veteran, and brings him good news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I love Kes Dameron.

 

 

 

 

 

Six months had passed and Sandra found she still could not think of her parents and Jeri in the past tense. Sometimes she wondered if she would ever be able to. Maybe it would be like this forever, the way a "phantom limb" was supposed to still feel real after an amputation. 

_ What if they had just vanished too suddenly and too completely for her mind to ever be able to accept it? _

 

 

_There had been a Veterans Resource Committee meeting on Hosnian Prime. Her mother, who hated to travel off-world anymore, had volunteered to go in person to address the Panel. She went to present a petition from 6,000 Civil War combat veterans demanding the Committee issue  a public statement condemning the Senate's inaction with regards to the First Order atrocities in the Otomok system and insisting on immediate material support for the Resistance as an official paramilitary unit. Dad and Jeri had gone along to visit old friends. They were only supposed to be gone for a week, two at the most. She had vid-chatted with Mom the night before and been told to pick up milk so there would be some in the cooler if they got back late and needed it for caff in the morning._

 

 

 

The alarms on the fourth moon of Yavin had not gone off but people began comming from everywhere and shouting in the street outside her building that a red line was crossing the sky.

 

Sand had followed her co-workers outside, and after staring in shock for less than a second ran the block from her office to the day nursery faster than she had ever thought she could run in her life. Ger was already there with Will in his arms. They had held onto each other terrified on the playground porch, unsure what was happening, whether they ought to run immediately for the shelters or just stay put. 

 

From nowhere a broadcast came across every pad and terminal, and out of every droid with text or audio, telling them not to panic, that it was only an optical effect and that they themselves were not under attack.

 

_Where it had come from they still didn’t know. None of the droids could tell. It remained a small mystery soon swallowed up in the confusion that followed._

 

The red line faded away within a minute and everyone ran for the nearest data receivers. Republic stations on Onderean were reporting some kind of attack on the Core, but within a minute everything crackled and faded as if being jammed.

 

Then a holograph alert appeared, blinking with static but clearly readable over the Yavin Civil Defense Channels.

 

It was Senator Leia Organa, small, pale and resolute. Her words were blunt and terrifying.

_The First Order has built a planetkiller, a new vastly more powerful Deathstar. Hosnian Prime is gone._ _All five worlds in the Hosnian System were destroyed without quarter or warning. The Free worlds of the New Republic are under attack by a First order armada. The Resistance is fighting. May the Force be with us all._

 

Then she was gone.

 

No one went to the shelters. There was no point.

 

One of the nanny droids turned the main media display and played an old puppet holo in the main playroom, “The Octave Staircase.”

 

A _classic._ _Sandra remembered it from when she was a child_.

 

 

 

For an awful twenty minutes the children watched happily and the parents held them and each other and tried not to cry.

 

Then a message crackled over the civil defense channels again, not from the Resistance directly this time, but from a Mon Cala platform, a warning.

 

_Valiant Resistance forces have completely destroyed the planetkiller, but the government of New Republic and her Fleets are gone. The outnumbered Resistance forces are fighting bravely against a conventional but massive armada from the Unknown Regions. The cowards and monsters of First Order and Neo-Imperial forces are targeting the free worlds and allied systems. _

_Political and strategic strongholds of the Republic are even now under direct assault but in order to increase fear the Enemy is also specifically targeting for vengeance  peaceful worlds it associates with the Civil War and the old Alliance. Chandrilla, Couruscant, Mon Cala, Kashyyk, Lothal, Mandalor, Yavin, Endor._

_ All of us who are the children and grandchildren of heroes will stand up together and face the darkness that rises to swallow the light our parents fought for. We will never yield and we will never forget.  _

 

The Resistance Base had moved off-world almost two years ago but the people of Yavin IV knew that they would still remain a possible target for symbolic Remnant terrorist attacks.  The Yavin system was the site of the legendary first great defeat of the Old Empire, the destruction of the Deathstar.  Yavin IV was also  a Veterans Economic Settlement Zone and the  majority of her population Alliance and New Republic veterans and their children and families. 

 

The evacuation alarms went off immediately. 

When Resistance evacuated they had left fuel reserves behind and nav plans shared with the Yavin Civil Defense.

Regional Evacuation Groups had been set up across the planet and as a travel agent and part time air traffic controller with a mind for spreadsheets Sandra’s ex-Pathfinder mother had drafted her early to head one.

While the comms crackled with panic she had run back to the tourism office while Ger, the other parents and the droids grabbed whatever supplies they could from the shelters. Across Yavin IV the alerts went out calling anyone with an FTL ship, or access to an FTL ship, to the evacuation sites.

Numb, with Sara on her lap, Sand had sat at the terminal comming through all her lists, divvying up the fuel, trying send out the nav plans, but this was beyond anything they had simulated or practiced for. W _as there enough fuel?_

The REG's had organized three different scenarios but almost all of the evacuation routes had ended with relocation to the safety of the Hosnian System or other "secure" New  Republic space.  _Where could they all go?_

 

Unexpectedly, as the mismatched ships began to boot up their computers all of them began to report that additional plans were also downloading, these included coordinate sets to even farther-flung worlds in the Outer Rim and Territories: Moorja, Dermos, Lah’mu, Ogem, half a dozen others.

There were no instructions included with these new jump coordinates only a string message on the file label. 

 _No guarantees/Safe as of 34 ABY/Good luck_.

 

 

 

One by one the ships began to assemble in the safety areas. No one knew how much time they had but there was less confusion in boarding than she’d feared and far less panic. Many of the older people took the lead, helping to lighten the newly-drafted shuttles, organizing supplies, keeping people calm.

 

In a set order, the assorted shuttles and transports began to lift off and winked out.

Some might coordinate later but each group would have to try to make their own way.

 

 

Sandra Tyree and her family were on one of the last shuttles to take off from the valley. Ger was already buckled into the crowded bay with Will when she climbed aboard, quickly handed over Sara to him and ran up front to the cockpit to check that they had a real pilot.

A scruffy college kid was setting up for lift-off.

 

“Ms. Tyree,” he said, “I have to set a course.”

 

Mr. Farrell, a stocky grey-bearded man who owned the Caff Buzz Cafe stuck his head in.

“Could you use some help up here kid?” he said, “I used to fly.”

“Shuttles?” the boy asked. 

“X-wings,” the old man said, “Ceren III, Endor and Jakku.”

“Yes, please, sir.”

The older man moved into the co-pilot seat and pulled up the nav grids, old and new.

 

 

“Sandra,” Mr. Farrell said,  With the fuel we’ve got the best choices left look to be Onderean or Lah’mu.”

 

 _Dad had been on a terra-forming crew in his University days. He had done an assessment of Lah’mu as a field project. She’d seen pictures of him there, smiling with some other kids on a black sand beach._

_It was better than flipping a coin, if not by much._

 

“If that's the case, I guess I vote for Lah’mu,” she said.

Mr. Farrell smiled. “I have to agree,” he said, “I don’t know much else about it, but no one ever tried to shoot me at Lah’mu. I’ll put in the coordinates kid, you set up the jump.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As they were moving away from their moon and leaving Yavin behind, Ger squeezed her hand and all Sand could think was how glad she was they were on the level without windows. Wherever they were going, whatever happened shedidn’t want her children to remember the last sight of their home as a blur of black.

 

She laid her head on her husband's shoulder, as Sara dozed against her. Will had climbed down to sit on the cargo bay floor with the other children and was petting the dog.

 

 

The dog should never have been there of course. No one had been allowed to bring pets, not on a code red evacuation. It was a terrible choice to make but everyone had understood, painfully, in tears, but they had understood.

_Many droids were left behind as well and some of these had offered to take on additional programming in order to care for non-indigenous animals but it had still been heartbreaking._

Just as the doors to their shuttle began to close though a speckled grey dog left outside the fence by one of the fruit farmers had jumped the barrier, cleared it cleanly, run across the field and leaped right onto the moving ramp, scrambling with back paws to get into the door even as it closed. 

 

No one could bear it. Cadiz’s daughter Mina unbuckled and grabbed the animal’s front legs, then several other people did the same. Together they pulled the dog inside just as the hatch sealed. The farmer, Mr. Dameron, had swept the panting mutt into his arms in tears, burying his face in it’s fur.

 

_He had a son, Poe, a pilot in the Resistance who had been a few years behind her in school. His wife had gotten sick and died years ago. She remembered her parents going to the memorial service._

 

The grey dog licked the hands of everybody nearby, wildly happy. It was probably the only living thing on that ship not terrified.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Lah’mu there were oceans and volcanic mountains and greenery.

_Well, if not greenery at least there was green._

Mosses and lichens, huge stands of ferns the size oftrees grew in the equatorial regions and plains were filled with plants that looked like grasses but botanically probably weren't. Botany had never been her best subject, she was a math nerd.

 

 

The rain water, of which there was a great deal on the southern half of the western continent was safe to drink but the abundant ground water wasn't unless filtered. The sand and soil was deep black in the coastal area they settled on, mineral-rich and extremely fertile, though those minerals had to be sifted and adjusted to grow edible food crops.

 

Lah’mu had never had more than a tiny population. After some long-ago terraforming initiative left the little backwater planet habitable but not profitable the number of settlers, probably only a few thousand even at peak, had slowly dwindled to four or five thousand people spread out over the whole planet. Most lived isolated lives on substance farms on the southern continent, although a few lived on the volcanic islands up north mostly in small ten or twelve person mining shops sifting cobalt for sale to artisanal circuit companies.

_It was a niche market. Mon Calmari shipmakers had once prized the blue color and vintage ships and collectors still used the hand-made replacement parts._

 

It was, when all was said and done, a great planet to be a hermit on.

A second Yavin shuttle joined them at the coordinates but even so the Yavin IV refugees had numbered fewer than sixty. Just another needle in an unwatched haystack.

Lah’mu was clearly a place people had gone to disappear since the days of the First Republic.

An eccentric old bush pilot came to check on the ships out of curiosity when they landed and for a traded case of rum gave them directions to a set of outbuildings left behind by some forgotten  ecological research project. _Clone Wars era, to judge from the moss-covered plaques._ Forty seven humans, mostly older retirees and young families, and twelve droids moved into and repaired some of the other structures, then searched out scrap and began to built more.

They also covered the ships with baffling tarps, set up simple audio receivers and waited. Slowly trying to figure out not just how to survive but what to do next.

 

 

Sandra had travelled far more than Ger because of her dad's job, living on half a dozen worlds before she was ten, so she recovered more quickly from the most straightforward shock, that of a new climate, an unfamiliarbiome. The coolness, the damp, and the frequently grey skies took a lot of getting used to for everybody.

 

 Ever since they met as teenagers working in the Archeology Summer Institute Camp kitchen she and Ger made it work by each falling apart but never at the same time. For Sand the struggle came when the adrenaline that had carried her through the fear and stress of the evacuation and those first anxious days began to falter. Fortunately her big bearded partner was a farmer and all farmers are cautious optimists at heart. Once on the ground he was able to to start working on physical challenges and work was his salvation. If Ger could build a house, a shed, a greenhouse, or plant something, calculate some growth, science the fuck out of some organic chemicals, he could cope with almost anything. Together they began to set up house with the Cadiz's in what had once probably been staff quarters for a water reclamation plant that Ger and some of the other farmers and landscapers quickly turned into a plant nursery.

"Where there's life there's hope, Sand" he said, and he believed it. She let that belief carry her. One day at a time they coped. 

Weeks passed, then months.

The children ran on the beach and dug in the black sand.

The grown-ups turned on the receivers at night, or when the children were sleeping and gathered together, listening as the War began.

Sandra began to look into ways to set up something like a school. BeeCeeThree promised to help.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will had been out in the front “yard” playing with Mina one misty morning, throwing sticks for Loco the dog,when SE-2 came and knocked on the window of the common room where Sandra was reading.

*……there is a stranger, Ms. Sandra. A single human, from appearances.….*

 

_Essie wasn’t even a droid they had brought with them._

_Mr. Dameron and Laura Cadiz had found it while exploring. It had been sitting in a half-buried shed near a long-abandoned burned-out farmstead a hundred k. up the coast. The poor thing seemed to have been left there powered out and memory-wiped for decades but when they brought it back with them, Mr. Farrell cleaned it up, re-set it’s solar and she came back beautifully. Essie had_   _an old-fashioned utilitarian manual labor program but they were able to up her audio capacities a little and when she spoke she seemed almost touchingly grateful to be awake again._

_SE-2 got along well with the other droids but could, of course, not remember anything about it’s previous life. All she seemed to retain was a certain watchfulness and a tendency to hover protectively around the children._

 

 

"Are you sure it's only one Essie?"

*.....I am only seeing a heat signature. consistent with a single human....*

 

Sand commed her husband in the greenhouse, took the blaster from under the desk, slid it into the inner pocket of her raincoat and walked out to see what Essie was talking about. The old droid's horizon vision was good but her processing got a little off at times. It wasn't her fault.

 

“Kids! come over here,” Sandra called and both children stopped their game to look at her.

_ Don't be scared. Don't scare them._

 

“Bring Loco and come in now,” She wanted to sound firm but not panicked.

 

 _Only a half dozen times in the last six months had they seen another shuttle in the air or speeder on the ground, much less anyone from one of the other farms or settlements. The nearest other settlers seemed to be on the other side of the peninsula almost 500 k. away....._ _Two grouchy old Twilek women who showed up one day, drew very clear lines on the map delineating where their mineral rights began and ended and left soon after._

_A couple of rickety little on-planet cargo shuttles had come by each for a day only to open up their little shopping bays full of common supplies and goods for sale, but they had posted regular if infrequent schedules for when they would return and it wouldn't be for another month._

 

 

A single human was probably nothing but a random prospector or explorer, but she wanted the children close to the door, well within hands reach and behind any blaster shot she might need to fire.

 

 

Will dutifully ran to her and took her free hand. Mina followed him, still holding the chewed-upstick, and the dog followed her but then abruptly halted and turned back with raised ears.

 

 

The “stranger”...Essie was right, clearly a single human in a blue rain slicker with the hood pulled back... could be seen coming up the path now. It looked to be a young woman with dark hair.

 

Mr. Dameron’s dog began to bark wildly and rushed toward the visitor.  Loco wasn't growling though, his tail was wagging madly and he seemed to be trying to tackle her with joy, leaping up and putting muddy paws on her shoulders

 

“Hola, perro loco! ¿Me recuerdas?” the person was saying, laughing, “Get down, you maniac!”

 

The stranger crouched on the damp ground then and tried to pet the animal but Loco kept running crazily in circles around her, trying to lick her face.

 

Ger appeared by the greenhouse hatch across the yard and behind him, probably coming to investigate the wild barking, was Mr. Dameron.

 

 

The woman stood up as the dog continued to bark, now running to the older man, then to the woman and then back again all while leaping happily.

 

"Señor, estoy tan feliz de haberte encontrado,” she said. Sandra couldn't hep but notice that she was pretty and had a beautiful smile.

 

 

_Mr. Dameron was tall with broad shoulders and could still lift heavier things than most of the much younger men. All the kids adored him and he would play cards with them by the hour._

_During those few sunny not-so-chilly days when knocking themselves out to get the greenhouse built, Ger had taken a break at midday to come to sit by her,exhausted._

_Mr. Dameron had still been hammering on the roof, "I just want to get this done, " he said._

_Flat on his back on the ground Ger looked up at the older man in awe._ _“I know that guy is old enough to be my dad but I swear, none of us can keep up with him. He's unreal. I don't know what the guy did but he must have been hell-on-hover back in the day.”_

 

_He was a Pathfinder like my mom, she had wanted to say, their motto was “First in, Last out and break shit in-between.” She held back though. That was something you learned early. Some of the older people didn’t want to talk about it._

 

 

The old soldier stood in the hatchway staring at the young woman in the rain slicker. After a moment he opened his arms wide and she ran and jumped into them.

 

“Kaylyra,” Mr. Dameron’s voice broke as he lifted her off her feet and swung her around. “Kaylyra ¡Querida niña!¡Soldado valiente!”

 

“Está vivo. Señor,” she was saying, clearly crying,“lo he visto. Está vivo. Él nos envió a buscarte .”

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Ms. Tyree?” Mina was saying,” “Is that lady Mr. D’s daughter?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hola, perro loco! ¿Me recuerdas? = Hello, crazy dog! Remember me?
> 
>  
> 
> Señor, estoy tan feliz de haberte encontrado = Sir, I'm so happy to 
> 
> have found you.
> 
>  
> 
> ¡Querida niña!¡Soldado valiente! = Dear girl! Brave soldier!
> 
>  
> 
> Está vivo. Señor, lo he visto. Está vivo. Él nos envió a buscarte  = He's alive. Sir, I've seen him. He's alive. He sent us to find you.


	29. Collapse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Months after the Battle of Crait, Poe Dameron and the desperate survivors of the Resistance are making alliances with the smugglers of the Outer Rim and using their help to steal supplies and ships they need to continue the Fight against the First Order. When a mission goes wrong in the fog of war though Poe, BB-8 and Rose Tico find themselves coming to the rescue of another Rebel soldier, a badly injured Kaylyra Andor, on a mission of her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Rose and Kayly moment. Poe is trying here dammit! BB-8 is the most useful astromech ever. Fire extinguisher droids.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The First Order had proved to have a far bigger presence here than they'd hoped. When Sheridan had been here two weeks ago with Rey and Finn the place had been clean, or so they said. The last thing any of them had expected was an Enemy shuttle parked on the upper runway and a mobile comm station and two stormtroopers installed on the balcony.

This had been a commercial parts shipping and repair station originally, franchised by SubPro on this Mid-Rim-on-the-edge-of-the-Outer-Rim backwater. The local mechanics union that operated it had a longstanding nod-and-wink repair "arrangement"  with a half dozen regional smugglers who liked to pay in cash. 

They'd come in here under the guise of being smuggler Reva Sheridan's new pit crew, and stayed hoping to steal a couple of A-wings and siphon off a little fuel.

 

By good luck they seemed to have stumbled in while there was a transport carrier in the repair bay with four broken Corellian shuttle fighters inside.... _maybe not x-wings but fighter ships for fuckssake._

By bad luck they seemed to have also wandered in on what looked like day one of a First Order take-over.

 

There had to be a Command decision so Poe Dameron made one. A calculated risk was worth it for ships with that kind of firepower. They had searched for fruitless months looking for a chance like this. 

_Slap me if you want to, Leia but I think even you would agree. Sometimes the jackal runs but eventually it needs to turn and fight. What will happen then if the jackal has no teeth?_

 

He reassessed and broke the sneak-in-snatch-and-grab plan into three parts:

 

1) While BB-8 ran interference with the tow-droids, C'ai and Rey would grab the A-wing and the carrier from the upper decks, taking out the pilots if necessary tu using the tower call signs that BB-8 would poach off the manifests. They were each to head straight out to the rendezvous point and not look back. 

2) If…. _and only if_ …. it looked like they both made it out clear without setting off any alarms Finn would walk down through the cable tunnels to plant a small… _.key word: small_ …..charge to take out the flight control power coupling and then dash to meet BB-8 with the one of the speeders that towed the fuel cartridges. He would rabbit it out to meet Sheridan on the local transit runway and get themselves and the fuel out with her that way.

 3) If the taking still looked good Poe and Rose would grab the T-4a shuttle out of this bay, the main one, and bust straight out the front door in the confusion of the dispatch losing power.

 

Not an all-or-nothing hotshot ploy Ma,am…. _he could clearly imagine saying to her while she frowned skeptically_ ….the plan would be aborted instantly if anything went sour at any of three points. No more than two personnel would be at risk at any one time.

They had a back-up.

If something went wrong at any point he would call it and the teams would scatter. Each taking off in a different direction to get back to Sheridan on the transport strip, or to steal anything that could fly and get back to D’Arcy and Emat on Ogem or to Chewie and the Falcon in the asteroid belt.

 _As desperate plans executed by fugitives went, he’d almost been proud of it_  

Unfortunately, at no point had he anticipated half the Main Bay blowing up.

 

 

Part one Seemed to go off with out a hitch. Hopefully C’ai was gone and Rey was three minutes behind him.

Part two was underway. Finn had scored a yellow coverall and was moving toward the Systems Tunnels, BB-8 rolling exactly sixty seconds behind. 

_So far so good._

Heand Rose lingered  at the far end, pretending to load a hover barge with empty canisters, but as Poe looked around across the open bay, something odd came to him. 

_Where was everybody?_

 

The hover-lifters were moving and the shuttles were all still stacked in the service bays but most of the people were gone. Two stormtroopers were visible up on the catwalk mezzanine and some FO officer and techs were still visible in the window of the control center overhead but down on the floor the Verpine mechanics all seemed to have disappeared. 

Half the service droids were suddenly gone on break too, and the Corellian pit crew weren’t under the A-23 anymore either.

Poe saw the Taurg foreman who’d given him the clipboard manifest earlier hurrying past them. The reptilian stopped to blink at he and Rose with luminous yellow eyes.

“Hey,” the foreman said, looking around nervously, “It's time, eh? You better go Rennick,” _…Rennick was the name on his stolen crew jacket…_ then the fellow fairly scampered out the rear service door.

 _What the fuck was going on?_  

He started backing up, tapping Rose’s arm to indicate she should follow him to the ramp they’d come up. _Something was wrong._

“What the fuck is going on?” Rose whispered.

 

Turning his head to answer he caught a green flash at the far edge of the catwalk out of the corner of his eye and felt something like a faint buzz in the air.

 _Poe didn’t flatter himself that it was anything like Rey and her “feelings.” It was just that being on the edge of too many explosions may have given him a sense for them._  

He grabbed Rose Tico, pulling her down and under the loading ramp just as the percussion hit. 

She probably screamed but there was no way to hear it because the plasteel sheet they huddled under boomed as chunks of debris hit like hail mixed with a couple dozen anvils. 

When the rain finally stopped,he crawled out, head ringing.

“Rose? Are you ok?” 

She was covered with a light layer of concrete dust but otherwise looked whole.

The girl nodded, still hanging onto his jacket, gasping, "Son of a bitch! What?…Poe, what happened…Finn?”

_Finn had only had a small sticky charge for the power panel, just enough to create a distraction and wasn’t even supposed to set it for another ten minutes._

 

“That wasn’t Finn…that was something else, maybe a fuel tank," Poe Dameron said….. _or more likely a bomb, but whose bomb?_

 

 

 

 

 

 

The front half of the flight bay was mostly rubble now except for the ramp to the lower level, where they had sheltered. 

Daylight streamed in from the gaping hole in the roof streaking through the smoke and dust.

 

Any ships that C'ai, Sheridan and Rey hadn't gotten out wouldn't be going anywhere. The shuttle was smashed under the repair rig and those troopers on the balcony must be buried underneath that.... _oh wow, half the mezzanine had fallen_ …. The little hanging control room too, along with whoever had been inside it, everything.

Nothing was moving except a handful of small droids, fire suppression CC-3's , who were spinning around squirting foam randomly.

His comm crackled now and Finn's voice came over, a little panicked. 

["Poe! Rose! Are you alright? That wasn’t me, I swear!I think there was a bomb or something!"]

_Really? You think maybe?_

 

"Affirmative," he said, "we're both ok, but cut off from the main door. Did we get the carrier? C’ai? Rey are you clear?"

He couldn't hear them but it seemed that Finn could.

 

[“C’ai is out and made the jump. Rey says she’s airborne in the carrier and setting up,” his friend's voice said, "Wait. Now she says she's circling back."]

_**No**._

 

"Negative," Poe said. “Tell her she’s to stick with the plan."

Tico looked up at him, not more scared than was appropriate to the situation, but clearly questioning. 

 _Set the tone Dameron the kid is looking at you._  

The ramp down looked clear and there had to be half a dozen little freight speeders docked on the lower level. The smuggler was still their best chance.

“Finn can you still get out from your side to meet Sheridan at the freighter?"

A little CC-3 rolled up to them and squirted suppressant foam at his feet, then rushed away.

_You had to credit the poorlittle bastards. They were doing their job._

["Affirmative," Finn was saying, "I can get a speeder and get out on this end."]

_"I" he'd said, not “we."_

_Shit!_

"Did BB-8 reach you before.....?" 

From out of the smoke his friend came hurtling toward him, skidding in the piles of foam. 

*... _ **Poe. Poe. Poe**._...*

"Buddy!" 

Dameron dropped quickly to his knees catching the droid before he crashed into them like a football, shouting as he passed Rose the comm.

“Finn, get to Sheridan's ship. We'll get down to the ground level, pull a speeder and meet you there,”

He was trying to right the still-spinning droid."It's ok buddy, I’ve got you now. Are you damaged?"

BB-8 was beeping anxiously.

*…. _kayly….kayly..injured…under the red wall…..hurry_..…*

 

 

 

 

_______________________

 

 

 

 

 

BB-8 lurched backwards and rolled away fast the way he had come dodging around chunks of rubble and jumping the puddles of foam.

“What's happening?" Finn was asking over the comm, “I don’t see a soul down here…. the whole place is deserted..” 

“Poe!” Rose shouted, “Where are you going?” 

"We have Rebel personnel down!" Dameron shouted over his shoulder as he ran.

 

BB-8 stopped at the edge of a pile of bent grating and chunks of fallen flooring. Poe skidded up beside him and looked down at the frantic droid.

"Where is she pal?" he asked, "can you tell?"

BB-8 began beeping wildly as he began to track roll up over some of the slabs.

 

Rose wasn't able to understand him as easily when he babbled like this, not the way Dameron always understood him, but she could make out bits....none of which made sense. 

*.....Poe!.... _old sister....control room…explosion.…hurt…..friend…_ * 

He was already climbing on top, shifting prices of rubble. Rose scrabled over a shattered console panel to get behind him.

 _Wow._ That whole mezzanine control room had collapsed. It looked like the floor had given way.

 

*... _here!_...* BB-8 was chirping from atop the pile.

 

 _Oh Force._ _There were was a body... More than one actually. A black uniformed officer....or at least the legs of one sticking out from under slabs of glassy debris. Halfway down the pile was a stormtrooper, motionless. Oh and another body, a grey FO tech, limp, face down._

_Wait. Wait. There was a burn hole through the back of the grey uniform. The fall hadn’t killed that one, he’d been shot._

 

Poe had reached a broken ceiling panel on the top of the pile and was lifting one edge. “Rose, get up here. Help me move this!" 

She tried to climb higher as BB-8 rolled under a corner of the slab and, once wedged in, turned sideways to start extending a couple of his grappling appendages, slowly jacking up that section. 

When her fingers were underneath the edge, she found something her boots could brace against and lifted.

It wasn't as heavy as she'd feared, nothing but slab-foam insulation with a veneer of red plas on one side. All these offices and most of the interior structures had been pre-fabs. Cheap stuff.

"Slide it this way!" Poe was saying, and as they did he dropped his end so that the whole thing slid away from them down the pile, revealing a gap underneath. 

A bent strut, _a doorframe maybe_ , had fallen so as to protect someone underneath.

It looked like a woman in another grey FO tech's uniform, her black hair dusted with plaster, eyes closed. 

 

Poe climbed right down into the gap, and was shoving more chunks of ceiling aside so he could get down beside her. BB-8 was using little grappling extensions to move debris off the woman's legs, twittering.

*.... _.old....says.....concussion. minor. bones. bones. bones.......not bleeding_.....*

 

Rose couldn't get beside them, there just wasn't room, so she lay flat so as to at least not shift anything more.

Dameron was touching the woman's face and brushing dust off, gently, moving back dark hair that had come lose from its regulation bun. 

"Kayly," he was saying, "Kayly, it's Poe, can you hear me?”

His head turned toward the droid.

"BB-8. I need to talk to Portia. Ask how I can get the earring off." 

Rose Tico had no freaking idea what was going on. There were 83 of them left in the Army of the Resistance and she had never heard of anyone was named either Kayly or Portia.

 

_Who was this person?_

 

 

_____________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _She was still breathing. If she had internal injuries and he tried to pull her out he might kill her, but if he left her here_ ….

_Andor what are you doing here?_

She was wearing the ear-link and he tried to tug it off gently while immobilizing her head but it wouldn’t come loose.

“BB-8 ask the old lady if I can take the earpiece off. Can she….unhook it or something?”

*…… _she says. the connection requires active disengagement….both ways_ …..*

_Yeah, I was afraid of that._ _Amazing super-high tech my ass, Portia!_

“Andor! Kayly…wake up, sweetheart…come on.”

_He had a knife but there was no fucking way he was going to cut her unless he had no other choice._

Blessedly, Andor’s eyes fluttered.

“Kayly?”

He lifted her right arm as gently as he could and tried to move her hand toward her ear. 

“Dam…Dameron… ?” she muttered.

 _Her eyes did not look good._  

“Kayly, dulce, you have to take off the link. I need to talk to Portia. Help me.…come on.”

 

He closed his fingers around hers and felt her move them slightly … _That’s it Andor_ … squeezing weakly but it must have been just enough that the tiny thing slipped off her earlobe.

He was so frightened of dropping it that he wrapped both his hands around hers.

Then she was out again, her fingers gone limp, but he had it. 

 _Oh Force._  

He put the clip on and instantly heard Portia speaking… _almost with relief_ …still in his mother’s voice.

 

[“ _Poe you need to get Kayly out of here. She has a concussion, a dislocated left shoulder and two broken femurs. The fractures are not compound but one is serious. Stabilize her head and slide her straight up and toward you. Find something to carry her on and get her out of here. She killed the First Order personnel in the room with her before they could send out a signal and I am suppressing the alarms but they will realize something has happened within 30 to 40 minutes when their personal do not respond_.”]

 

He looked up, “Rose. We have about 30 minutes to move her. We need….a door panel or something to lay her on and I need….” 

He needed something he could stabilize her head with. Looking around frantically his eye fell on a third dead stormtrooper half buried on the near side.

_There was a blaster hole through the eye piece of the helmet._

_What happened here Andor?_  

"There! Get the chest plate off that trooper, Fast!”

The poor kid looked at him, swallowed hard and crawled over to do it.

_The little knife “Kestrel” had slipped him al those months ago was in in his sleeve, he kept it there pretty much all the time, for complicated reasons._ _Now he used it to cut the off the front and the right sleeve of grey tech jacket and slash it into strips._

 

 

Rose kept talking to Finn, he could hear her, “No…I’m fine….Poe says she’s one of ours….I don’t know…tell Sheridan to move in closer….no, I’m ok I swear…we both are…”

 _Probably so she wouldn’t have to think about what she was doing._

 

When she passed him down the curved white armor he slid it under Andor’s head and shoulders and secured it with the cloth strips, using Rennick’s crew jacket to pad inside it.

 

[“ _Careful, that poorly-made insulation broke her fall somewhat and I read no spinal damage or cranial bleeding but she definitely sustained a concussion._ ”]

 

BB-8 dragged up a piece of two meter door panel, then track-rolled carefully over the rubble to position himself at the injured woman’s feet. Reaching down with what looked like one of his grappling claws he clamped…. _firmly enough, Poe hoped_ … to stabilize her broken legs.

_You’re the best, buddy._

 

“Rose, I’m going to try and lift her a little and I need you to work your way down in here and slide this panel underneath.” 

She did as he told her but asked, “Poe, who is this woman?”

 _Rebel Intelligence. Cyber-Sabotage support liaison. A green kid whose broken shuttle I had to instrument-land. The second generation of Rogue One. A lone wolf spy. A Resistance pilot. A friend. The last other human being I had sex with…pick one._  

“She’s Resistance, on a mission for the General. We can’t leave her here.” 

“Portia, are we still clear?" 

[" _Yes. As of now I am not detecting anything incoming to this depot. When she learned of impending partisan attack, Kayly convinced the civilian staff to flee or seal themselves in the defense shelters. They are unlikely to alert the First Order. All of the Enemy troopers and two supervisor officers on site are dead._ "]

 _That many? He felt sick. A carrier full of slightly broken Corellian fighters….Dameron you idiot, too good to be true._  

"Was this a trap?"

[" _Yes, but not for you. There is an aboriginal resistance movement here, quite separate from yours, linked to the local smugglers. We were attempting to make contact_.”]

 _Ah. Sheridan's mysterious "other customers."_  

"Poe," Rose was helping him lift the makeshift stretcher.... _Don't wake up yet Andor, I don't want to think how bad this would hurt on a popped shoulder and a couple of broken legs._.... “What is that thing on your ear and who the hell are you talking to?"

 _I'm not sure how I would answer that question even if it was a good idea to try._  

[“ _Tell her the truth. I’m just a navigational station._ "] 

"An old contact of Leia's, Rose.I'll explain later. Tell Finn to get word to Rey. She needs to make sure nothing on that carrier or those fighters is marked with a tracker before she gets to the rendezvous point. Scan them down to the seat cushions.”

_Thank the Force Rey had been the one to take the carrier. C'ai was a kick-ass pilot but Rey had the skill set to park the rig on an asteroid somewhere, strip it down to the bolts with nothing but a pair of tweezers and a flashlight, then reassemble the damned thing and fly back to the Falcon in time for dinner._

 

The three of them had managed to maneuver down the ramp to the speeder level before Kayly woke up enough to let out a strangled groan.

There were a half a dozen service landspeeders stacked around.

 

“That one!” Rose said, twitching her head in the direction of a V-35 with a flatbed on the back. “We can get her in the back.”

They lowered Kayly down and BB-8 and the mechanic dashed over to open up the engine casing and hotwire the bastard.

 

Poe knelt down beside the makeshift stretcher. Kaylyra Andor’s eyes were open wide now and she was trying to look around, clearly disoriented.

“Shhh…Just stay still, Andor, stay still. We’ve got you strapped down. We’re getting you out of here but you’re hurt pretty badly.”

 

“Poe? Where’s…where’s Portia?... I can’t hear Portia.”

 

“It’s ok. It’s ok, I’ve got her.”

 

“You can’t….I can’t….”

 

Rose had the landspeeder moving now, backing it up close to them then jumping out to open the back hatch. BB-8 was up front with the engine running.

 

[“ _You need to go Poe Dameron. Your mechanical friend tells me you have an idiot smuggler helping you, I assume that means the inefficiently engine-boosted so-called Baudo-class freighter presently hovering at the lower southeast loading docks of this facility. A Planetary Security force squad unwillingly augmented by a First Order attack shuttleare en route and will be here in less than five minutes. I will delay them by showing a faulty fire suppression map but you must leave immediately_.”]

 

“Poe,” Kaylyra Andor sounded young, frightened, “Promise me…I can’t be…”

_No, soldier. We are not having that discussion._

 

“Kayly, listen you have to trust me. it's going to be ok. Portia and I are on this.”

He reached in through the makeshift head brace to at least touch her cheek. 

Rose dashed around and they lifted the board into the back.

The bed was narrow with boxes. _Good. She wouldn’t slide around_. There was just enough room for one other person.

 

“I’ll drive,” he said, “you stay with her in back, Rose, try to keep her calm.”

 

 

 

 

_____________________

 

 

 

Rose was wedged into the back bed of the truck-speeder, sitting on the floor of it just above the injured woman’s head. She braced herself with her hands on either side so she didn't fall on her. Poe was booking out so fast, she was kind of glad she couldn’t see where they were going.

 

“Hi,” she said, “My name is Rose Tico.”

She really didn’t know what else to say.

The woman on the door panel stretcher was breathing shallowly like several things hurt a lot but she was trying to stay calm with it. Nasty purple bruises were starting to show on her cheek and forehead.

“Hi,” she said quietly, “I'm Kayly.”

Then she closed her eyes again.

_You were supposed to keep people with concussions awake right? Or was that a myth? She didn’t know._

 

Rose did have a lot of questions she wanted to ask.

 

_Who are you? If you’re Resistance where have you been for the last eight months? What was your mission for the General? What were you doing up there in First Order disguise? Who is Portia? Did you shoot those people in there? Did you know about the bomb? How do you know Poe? Why did he call you sweetheart ? What was Poe talking about when he asked somebody about a trap?_

  

“Where are you from Kayly?” she asked instead, like they were at a mess hall table or something.

“You...won’t have....heard of it,” the woman said slowly. “It’s called….Ea.”

Rose hadn’t.

 

“Well, that’s ok,” she said, aware she was babbling a little, “I’m from a place nobody around here has ever heard of either, it’s…it was called Hays Minor.”

“I have.... actually,” the Kayly person said, very softly, looking at the roof of the speeder-bed because she couldn’t really see Rose with her head strapped down on some dead stormtrooper’s armor. “I’m sorry.” 

“Why?” Rose asked, wishing she hadn’t as soon as the word was out of her mouth.

 

“We,”… _she must be in a lot of pain to breathe like that, wincing every few words_ …. “we....my people....saw….but there was nothing we could do....for you..... our tech is...minimal.… no weapons and….no ships…..all we could do was try to hide from them….save our own world….and fight….this way.”

 

Rose closed her eyes. _She’d never thought of it like that. That there were other little worlds out there in the Regions that might have seen…not like the powerful planets that had just turned a blind eye….people who wanted to help but couldn’t._

 

“Did you shoot those First Order officers in that room..before it fell?”

“Yes,” quietly. 

“Good,” Rose said.

 

 

Poe was slowing, turning. The woman must have slid a little because she groaned in pain.

They’d stopped. 

 

“Hang on, Kayly,” she told the other Region woman. “We’ll take care of you.”


	30. Crossings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the lead up-and post-script to the previous chapter: Kayly and Portia's undercover mission at a small shipping station on Roche goes off the rails. Against Portia's advice she takes a too-risky chance to salvage it. Portia recalls how the "Rules" for Kayly's almost-lone wolf spy mission are laid out. A First Order Intelligence and Security officer in command at Roche, in charge of setting a trap for a local indigenous rebel group thinks one of his junior officers has uncovered a mole. He is wrong. Finding her mission even more blown than she thought it was Kayly resorts to extreme measures. Portia solicits BB-8's help and works with Poe Dameron to help the injured Kayly, learning that all may not be right with the surviving Resistance. Portia also reports, as per the Rules, Kayly's dangerous situation to a concerned Cassian. Fortunately he is not alone when he revceives it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quite a bit happening. Hopefully it all makes sense....Portia's ability to talk to multiple people simultaneously seemed like a good idea at the time. Verpines are insectoid people native to Roche. Taureg are reptillians also native.
> 
>  
> 
> Coloro che con il loro sacrificio hanno mantenuto viva la speranza = Those who with their sacrifice have kept hope alive.
> 
>  
> 
> 01101111 01101100 01100100 00100000 01110011 01101001 01110011 01110100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110001 01110101 01100101 01110011 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100100 01100001 01101110 01100111 01100101 01110010 = old sister question is there danger
> 
>  
> 
> 01100011 01101000 01100001 01101110 01100111 01100101 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01100001 01100011 01110100 01101001 01100011 01100001 01101100 00100000 01100011 01101001 01110010 01100011 01110101 01101101 01110011 01110100 01100001 01101110 01100011 01100101 00100000 01001101 01101001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100011 01100001 01101100 01101001 01100010 01110010 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01110101 01101110 01100001 01110110 01101111 01101001 01100100 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101 00100000 01100110 01101001 01101110 01101110 00100000 01110011 01100001 01100110 01100101 00100000 01110000 01101111 01100101 00100000 01110000 01101111 01100101 00100000 01110000 01101111 01100101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110001 01110101 01101001 01110010 01100101 01110011 00100000 01101001 01101110 01100110 01101111 01110010 01101101 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 = change in tactical circumstance mission recalibration unavoidable finn safe poe poe poe requires information




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“How many x-charges and where are they planted?” Kayly said, using every ounce of strength she had to keep her voice quiet and her expression neutral, to look as if she were only checking a manifest. 

“I don’t know!” the Corellian said, “I only know Dellon sold them six, I don’t know if they mean to use them all here, or even if..”

_You stupid sons-of-bitches. We HAD this. Two days tops and I'd have walked out to claim Guardian from the impound lot with the satisfaction of a hard job done as well as possible._

 

 

 

 

 

The FO-supported Roche Provisional Trade and TransportAuthority had baited a trap for the Verpine Resistance when some half-alert First Order Watchdog noticed Matriarch Seriss’s non-too-subtle repeated theft of ships….specifically atmospheric ships with firepower.

When Portia spotted the First Order purchases she’d tracked them here. Kayly went in with a local smuggler and walked right into Serris’s hideout to give her a warning and an offer. The fugitive Matriarch, around whom the local resistance had coalesced, had agreed.

Tonight or tomorrow some of the VR’s people were supposed to “attempt” a raid. It would fail, of course, due to the intrepid action of a newly transferredIntelligence officer, Junior Lieutenant Nori Herrick, who would tragically be killed in the attack. By the time the incinerated fuel tanker where she had made her last stand had cooled enough for the poor thing’s body to be found the DNA would match the remains. 

_It was an old trick but still a good one in a war zone full of bribable coroners and incendiaries._

Nori was the highest ranking of a half dozen false characters Portia had created for her and planted in the First Order Personnel files, a striving and back-stabbing little piece of work, always on the look-out for a promotion, which was clearly why she was transferred so often and made so few friends.

_She was also, therefore a one-and-done._

  

Afterward the bank transfers would have made it look like the corrupt regional supervisor was on the take from both sides. If it worked, Serris had her own people poised to move in the chaos. Even if it didn’t they would have gotten enough warning to move their base and regroup. 

 

 

_Yet all it took to unravel three weeks of work and danger it seemed was for an unnamed person to wave some money in front of a Corellian._

_Was this a turf conflict amongst the smuggler gangs? Or had one of the young hotheads in the Low Basin Hive decided now of all the fucking times to challenge the Matriarch’s leadership? Had one of  the locals snapped and decided to go out in a blaze of revenge terrorist glory? None of the above?_

 

There were six stormtroopers, five FO Intelligence Liaison officers…. _four if you subtracted Junior Lieutenant Nori Herrick_ …. and two techs on base.  

Was some idiot willing to kill 250 Verpine workers, at least fifty off-world workers on the franchise crew and an indeterminate number of other staff, smuggler crews and passengers, blow the local Resistance cell network, send their already nervous smuggler-allies running and risk triggering a First Order crackdown that might cost thousands of lives just to kill thirteen bad guys and make a statement?

_There was scant comfort in the knowledge that when Serris got her hands on the thorax of whoever fucked this up she was going to crush it like a packet of crisps._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As Kayly stepped up close to her Corellian crew contact she lifted a hand as if to shield one ear from the loading bay noise, then attached the ear clip so Portia could hear all. 

_This no-jewelry rule for First Order Personnel made everything five times harder. Now she had to risk it, even though she knew full well what she was going to hear the old man’s voice telling her._

 

[“Get out.”] 

_Not helpful, Portia._

 

She handed the man back his data pad with a look of faux scorn that required almost no acting at all.

“If there is anybody in your crew you care about at all I suggest you tell them to get…quietly and without attracting attention you stupid fucks….into the service tunnels by 01:00. Do the universe a favor and don’t tell Dellon.”

 

["Kaylyra. We've talked about this. You've done all you can for them here. Get out now."]

 

Talking to herself would not go unnoticed so she stopped at a terminal and wrote some "notes" on her cargo tracking pad….. _carefully disconnected it from the main data feed_.... **Taking 30:00 to get word to T & clr civilianss. Msg Serris.**

  

["I've messaged her at the drop. She hasn't picked up. Kaylyra you may not have 30. These charges are free-standing. Even if you plug me in I won't see them until they send an ignition pulse, 00:02 at best, I can't..."]

 

**Fuckers may wait for nxt shift chng to max FirOrd casualties.Hav gun have plan.**

 

[“You are making an assumption here that massing First Order casualties is their primary mission. You're also assuming whoever bought bombs on impulse has any brain at all. Even if you are right on the first point you are almost certainly wrong on the..."]

 

 **Lv u Prtia. doing it.**

 

She cleared and snapped off the pad, looked around like a pissy junior officer eager to take out her frustrations on the nearest underling and strode over to Mermin, the Taureg foreman. _He was her contact on base and a rock-solid individual._ If he passed word to one of his local Verprine Resistance contacts on-site the whole insectoid cell could do that pheromone message-share thing they did and hopefully get some of these people to safety. She had a plan to provide a distraction for them at least and at best, maybe, try to salvage some of their work here. 

First she had to drop the bad news on Mermin.

 

_"Shit. I just got new crew on from corporate, several humans, you think it's one of them?" He waited to grumble until a loud transport lumbered past._

_"No time to wonder," Kayly said, "we're..."_

_…here she inserted one of the few Taureg obscenities she knew, one about getting your anal cavities non-voluntarily packed with salt, in the plural present tense…_  

_"....we just have to try to get your people out. Live to fight another day. I'll do what I can."_

 

Thank Ea, reptilians had so few facial expressions, only a slight flair of the nostrils showed the old Taureg's deep distress. He nodded and moved off.

 

She strode quickly toward the lift to the control room and walked up to the First Order officer waiting there beside a twitchy Verpine Planetary Security supervisor.

 

"Lt. Kerix, sir," she saluted, while giving the insectoid a glance of distrust and disdain, "may I have a private word sir?"

 

Hopefully if he noticed that her hair had slipped from its regulation severity to cover her right ear he would excuse it as the result of the constant vibration and blasts of exhaust in the service bay. It was also possible he'd think she was flirting with him. A one-time reprimand for "fraternization" was the only blemish on his record. _Not today dick._ One way or another Lt. Kerix’s ok service record would be ending in the next half hour.

 

 

 

 

_________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The hardest part of the venture with Kayly was the toll it clearly took on Jyn and Cassian.

 

Portia knew very well how they suffered for both their children. The anxiety always inherent in the bond with biological offspring in this case was painfully sharpened by projection and empathy. Poor Cassian’s fears for Kayly especially were based on traumatic personal experience.

 

_Few records of any kind were preserved within the New Republic Archives regarding Andor, Cassian Jeron, Captain, AotAtRtR/deceased. The few that had ever existed had been carefully and thoroughly destroyed long ago, leaving only the barest shadow now that such a person had ever existed. Name, serial number,  notation as an Intelligence Analysis officer...recruited on Carrida….date redacted…medical files redacted…listed among those killed in the assault on the data base at Scarif, promoted posthumously to Major. No family. No survivors._

_A thin file remained in the old Bothan Spynet files….well sealed though less inaccessible than it should have been until she shored up their firewall…..which listed aliases, names, places, most of them meaningless to all but a few._

_His name appeared beside Jyns on a beautiful memorial on Mon Cala Prime, Coloro che con il loro sacrificio hanno mantenuto viva la Speranza._

 

 

 

Jyn was right when she took his hands and told him. "She is smart and strong with your courage, your dedication, and my cussed stubbornness but she is not you or me. The First Order is not the Galactic Empire. You’re too good a spy not to know that. These soulless fuckers are just homicidal children dressing up in costumes." 

_Clever Jyn and her insights. She could always get through to him._

 

 

 

"I will watch over her. She will not be alone," Portia had promised them.

 

 

Trust and honesty being essential in such an undertaking,ground rules were laid down, for all of them.

_Jyn made a list, which always diminished her stress while Cassian laid out the military terms and protocols, which always diminished his._

  

Portia was sternly clear with Kayly there would be under no circumstances any lies told or concealment of information regarding her status and well-being from her parents. That was a burden they would all have to agree to bear.

 

Jyn and Cassian would determine how much detail they needed in her reports and how often.

 

Lighthouse must remain Kayly’s primary contact base and she would check in regularly and inform them of all her movements.

 

She was acting an independent operative on her own authority until such time as Resistance Command, in whatever form it still survived, gave her orders otherwise but she remained a vital asset and Ea’s liaison. 

 

Ea’s security must not be put at risk.

 

Kayly would not risk herself unduly.

 

She would return home to report in person by a secure route that passed Portia’s muster on a regular schedule or whenever Portia determined that her mental or physical health required it.

 

_“Remember that Mama was a Partisan not regular Army like Papa, Sunshine,” Jyn said. “I still have a space ship here and if you break the rules Uncle Bodhi and I will come get your ass.”_

 

 

___________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lt. Kerix stopped the lift at the control center level but left the doors closed so that they could remain inside and speak out of hearing of the two techs and the stormtrooper.

 

“And you have no idea who might have initiated this security breech, Herrick?”

 

“I can’t be certain sir,” the girl said. She looked side to side as if concerned that the very elevator walls had ears. Most of the “juniors” had the same habit... _a legacy he supposed of brief careers spent entirely aboard stations and destroyers where walls usually did_. Like most of her kind she was a striving little wretch whose relentless response to uncertainty was to search for advantage over her fellows. This was programmed into officer training  as it kept the junior staff focused on results and quick to report each others weaknesses, but in a backwoods posting like this it could be distracting. That too few of their officer corps had ground experience was the unspoken secret of the First Order. This posting was hardly a prestigious one but Martin Kerix had gotten a taste of actual insurgency containment in his first assignment in the mining sectors and saw opportunity. It was a path to advancement few had the stomach to face, unlike those who preferred the cutthroat glamour of starship postings, so there was less competition.

 

Still, Herrick was not quite the sniping automaton that the other junior officers were. She was clever with a facility for surveillance equipment that in her first 72 hours had improved the camera tracking coverage by 32%. Her suggestion of using centrally-programed drones instead of independent floor droids to augment the stationary feeds might prove key to springing this little trap and setting him up for advancement. 

Also, he had to admit, she was far easier on the eyes than the rest of the crew, especially with her cap and hair in slight disarray. 

 _Now, now....What did Bestir III teach you Martin? Discipline brings the only safe reward. No burning his fingers on that handle again until his position was secured. It was something to look forward to as yet another advantage of an off-station posting though, fewer prying eyes._

 

“I think the matter may be time-sensitive sir." the girl was saying," I noted a coded outgoing message from flight control…normal enough, but there was no incoming ship that corresponded to…., 

He cut her off immediately.

 

“You think one of local scum is contacting the Rebel cell through this tower?”

 

_Excellent! That would prove verification of the mission. The idea after all was to draw the rebel insects into the upper station to try for the ships stored there._

 

“No sir, that’s just it,” she stepped closer, “The signal was sent out from an unused terminal. That could only be done by..” again the suspicious glance at the lift comm panel.

 

 _Herrick, there is no Internal Security Monitor these feeds are only checked in the event of an investigation_ , he thoughtexasperated. _Oh fine._

 

He keyed the Executive code and turned off the recorder.

 

“There. Speak freely Lt. Herrick, who do you suspect?”

 

“That’s just it sir,” she said, urgently, “There are only five of us on this facility with that kind of level three authorization….six….” she stumbled with a slight smile,”If we include yourself….which, of course…I don’t sir.”

 

“You include yourself Herrick?”

 

“Of course sir,” she nodded, “I would expect nothing less. My code should be reviewed with everyone else’s. You would be the only person above suspicion.” 

_Damn it._

 

Kerix reactivated the comm and opened the doors to step into the control room, with Herrick behind him.

 

Shoving one of the techs aside he patched the data pad Herrick gave him into the main surveillance himself and pulled up the transmissions from 07:00 to 07:15.

 

There it was, plain as day. A coded message to what looked like a low-flying craft but must be a ground site. 

_How had this gotten past the Security protocols without setting off an alarm?_

 

 

“All officers,” Kerix barked. “I want all officers to report to the control room at once.” He turned to the trooper. “You, I want all your people on the gantry way except for the one on the upper access. Once the officers report seal the lift. No one is to leave without my authorization.”

 

“Yes sir,” the trooper’s voice crackled over his helmet comm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Herrick stood back by the rear terminal wall as three of his other officers exited the lift. She nervously tripped over a rack pile of circuit pipe knocking a few loose and sending them rolling. The bloody room was still partly under construction.

_Hell. The girl might have the natural predatory skills for Internal Security and Re-education but she’d have to work on her nerves if she ever wanted to work with the Black Armors._

 

Corporal Rift arrived last, hair still rumpled, the call must have woken him from sleeping since he had been on the night shift.

 

They stood all five at attention, Herrick at the end by the doorway. A quick glance through the window showed him the other troopers in position on both ends of the mezzanine, rifles ready. The lead trooper was inside covering the lift door. The techs were still nervously working, headphones on, eyes on their terminals.

 

“One of you is a traitor,” he bellowed, faintly aware of sounding slightly pompous, but confident of achieving the desired effect. 

 

Perhaps he did, but only momentarily.

 

 _Many things happened._

“Sir!” One of the techs cried, clearly panicked, “The carrier on the flight deck, the one with the fighters, sir….it’s moving”

“I have a shuttle missing on four sir….it went out without…” the second tech began, but then stopped, hitting the visual and pulling up a screen, “I have an unauthorized astromech on the platformit looks like a non-regulation BB-8…”

 

“Fuck!” said a woman’s voice he did not immediately recognize.

 

An alarm went off.

 

The officers stood like panicked deer, all but one.

Herrick suddenly dropped to the floor. As the trooper reflexively turned in her direction she struck out from the ground. The man was hit a crushing blow to the unarmored back of a knee with a section of construction pipe.

 

The blast shields dropped around the controls room, sealing like an armored box and cutting off the troopers on the outside catwalk.

 

Kerix drew his sidearm and dove behind the console as Herrick fired twice. _One to kill the trooper on the floor?_ The nearest officer…. _Bonderin_ …was also down now.Herrick jumped behind the standing flight panel and took down Lemassa as the boy turned to fire where she had been a second ago. The ricochet off the shielded window bounced twice and hit Rift even as he dropped toward the floor still struggling to get his sidearm from his holster. Kerix got one round off from behind cover but missed, the woman had dropped low now and moved again.

The comm panel exploded in a shower of sparks and the tech in front of it fell dead from the through-shot. 

_That wasn’t a standard sidearm. Had she grabbed the trooper’s Blastech?_

 

The alarms were still blaring, echoing in the sealed cube of the control room. The troopers outside couldn’t see and might not even be able to hear what was going on in here. 

_How long would it take them to figure it out?_

_Where the hell was she? He could barely see._

 

Smoke from the burning comm display filled the tiny room and the fire-suppressant system started spraying mist from the ceiling. 

He tried to activate his comm with his free hand but there was nothing but a buzz…. _it was being jammed_. 

His eye caught movement suddenly. The lift door started to open a crack and from behind the display panel to the left of it someone darted out. Kerix fired. 

It was the remaining tech.

 The woman he had known as Nori Herrick was standing behind him, but Lt. Kerix didn’t have time to fully turn before she shot him.

 

 

 

______________________

 

 

The whole thing took less than 1.5 minutes. The confused and alarmed troopers on the cat walk were still trying to figure out what had happened and why the blast shields had dropped without the main alarms going off.In a luckier galaxy, the door would have opened on manual a few seconds later and they would have pried it the rest of the way open to find a wounded Lt. Herrick the only survivor of a shoot-out by the traitorous Rift and Lemessa and the rest of the officers.

 

Unfortunately Portia had been right. The jackasses who had planted the charges had not been smart enough to wait for the shift change.

 

Kayly would later remember dropping the Blastech and picking up Bonderin’s service arm, then taking a step toward the catwalk door just as the old man’s voice filled her head.

 

[“GET IN THE DOORWAY NOW.”]

 

She dove, the floor lifted up and everything came crashing down

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing after that…not even pain, just dark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[“KAYLY.”]

 

 

 

 

 

[“KAYLY.”]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Kayly…”

 

_Not Portia._

_Not the old man._

 

 

 

“Andor….”

 

 

_Who?_

 

 

“Kayly…wake up, sweetheart…come on….”

 

 

 

 

 

There was light but everything was blurry…double…..

 

_oh Mama, my head hurts._

 

 

_Dameron? Poe?_

 

“Kayly………you have to take off the link……talk to Portia….help me do this…”

 

 

[“KAYLY, DEAR. GIVE HIM THE MOD. TAKE IT OFF. LET HIM HELP YOU.”]

 

 

_Dameron? Oh. This isn’t right…._

 

 

 

 

____________________

 

 

 

 

Poe Dameron was extremely anxious but she gave him instructions as to Kayly’s condition and he responded quickly. His physical reflexes were about as quick as they came for a biological of his species, really, it was just at this moment that she wished, irrationally that they were faster. He was not alone. There was another youngerwoman with him. “Rose.”

_Poor thing, she looked not much more than a child._

 

 

Portia had begun talking to the good-natured little mechanical even before the explosion. She recognized him at once on the upper platform.

To her surprise he remembered her. This pleased her because most of them usually didn’t. She had met a few in their travels who could, slightly, which was heartening.

This little dear was quite retentive and had a tendency to overlay his operational input, programming, and analysis streams with an endearing responsiveness.

 

01101111 01101100 01100100 00100000 01110011 01101001 01110011 01110100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110001 01110101 01100101 01110011 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100100 01100001 01101110 01100111 01100101 01110010

 

 

“Yes small one,” she told him, careful to phrase it in ways that would not frighten him, “there may be.”

 

 

When the bomb had gone off she explained what had happened and asked him to go for help. He had hesitated briefly, caught between two sets of operational instructions. _That was always risky with the higher function mechanicals, she'd known a number to go right off their nut when presented with such scenarios._

He had been ordered to accompany another team member it seemed, but he was a sturdy little dear and to Portia’s relief and admiration he recalculated and reinterpreted….clumsily it was true, but he even articulated his process as he hurtled away.

 

01100011 01101000 01100001 01101110 01100111 01100101 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01100001 01100011 01110100 01101001 01100011 01100001 01101100 00100000 01100011 01101001 01110010 01100011 01110101 01101101 01110011 01110100 01100001 01101110 01100011 01100101 00100000 01001101 01101001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100011 01100001 01101100 01101001 01100010 01110010 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01110101 01101110 01100001 01110110 01101111 01101001 01100100 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101 00100000 01100110 01101001 01101110 01101110 00100000 01110011 01100001 01100110 01100101 00100000 01110000 01101111 01100101 00100000 01110000 01101111 01100101 00100000 01110000 01101111 01100101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110001 01110101 01101001 01110010 01100101 01110011 00100000 01101001 01101110 01100110 01101111 01110010 01101101 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000

 

 

 

It was hardly sparkling conversation but bless the infant it was something.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poe Dameron proved intrepid, resourceful and, to her relief since she had already determined him to be a person of forthcoming nature, discreet.

 

Having gotten Kayly onto a transport he moved it quickly out toward a ship that waiting on the disused ramps some distance away.

Operating a craft, any kind of craft it seemed, diminished his cortisol levels. He was like Bodhi Rook in this.

 

[“What kind of medical facilities do you have access to Poe?”]

 

“Sheridan has a very basic med set up on her ship.”

 

["That may be sufficient for Kayly's head injuries and the shoulder but she will need regenerative treatment for the leg damage, or a place for long term shelter.”]

 

“You’re talking a bacta tank, right? We have a better facility and a couple of medics at Ogem…we will head there.”

 

[“Is Leia Organa on Ogem?”]

 

He did not answer.

 

[“Where is…”]

 

“I can’t talk to you about this, Portia.”

 

_Not lying but…_

 

[“Poe?]

 

 "All I can tell you is that Leia is not at Ogem. The subject needs to be closed, Portia.”

 

His gaze stayed steady on the horizon in front of him…. _because, of course it would._ She felt she knew him well enough for that now.

 

_But, oh Poe Dameron. That is not a reassuring heart rate._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cassian was with several other people on her second heart level and was calling up the staircase to Bodhi on the fourth level. Bodhi had begun giving Lessons on Ship Assembly….well, to be fair “Safe Ship Dis-Assembly Without Losing a Finger” was a more accurate title….. to some of the younger Scavenger crews.They were quite popular. Cassian was set to relieve him. She was glad that Cassian was here. This was the sort of news that was stressful for him to hear over the mod.

 

She projected near him as a plump brown-skinned, middle-aged woman with curly silver hair…. _Mariana, Medical Support Technician, her appearance had always been reassuring to people in difficult situations._

 

 

“Cassian. Kayly has been injured in a contact mission on Roche. I was able to make immediate contact with Resistance Command fighters and she is with them. They are taking her to a place of relative safety.” They had agreed that she could delay reporting of events up to thirty minutes in order to assemble clearer pictures and diminish the stress of second by second accounting.

 

_His heart rate elevated sharply, as she had known it must, but he managed himself._

 

_Poor Cassian._

 

“How seriously?” he asked, pale, hand still steady on the railing.

 

“Her injuries are significant but not life-threatening, Cassian. She is with friends now.

 

“She will be alright, Cassian-ally” young Kemmi said, getting up quickly from the bench to cross and take Cassian’s hand reassuringly. “Kayly kicks ass, always and forever.”

 

“Resistance Command?” Kes Dameron said from the other side of the table, “General Organa?”

 

“No,” Portia-as-Mariana said, “She is with your son.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been pretty sick so I'm blaming all delays in posting on that and all incoherence on medication.
> 
> Trying to write some action and move plot at the same time.


	31. Mirrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tiny bit inside the smugglers ship Arkanis Lady, as Poe Dameron brings an injured Kaylyra Andor back to a Rebel base on Ogem. Poe and Portia chat. Smuggler Reva Sheridan reflects on just how she got in this mess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small but life is hectic and more to come!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They laid a course in through the old mirrored tunnels.

[“Oh, this is a clever hiding place," Portia said. “Ridiculously inefficient for laser refinement processing …which is, I assume why they were originally built…but extremely difficult to scan accurately from an outside ship."] 

Poe felt a foolish flush of pride, even though the old factory site had been Emmat's find not his. 

Intellectually he knew .... _and in his gut too, honestly._...that the voice in his ear had nothing real to do with his mother. The vocabulary was different, the "tone" for lack of a better word, but still...... _damn_.

 

The longer he wore it the more he realized that Kayly was right.

 

 

 

 

 

_"So, when does it stop being weird?" he'd asked her, sitting by the cot in what passed as the "med bay," being the better-lit corner of the luggage compartment on Sheridan's converted Baumo transport._

_"According to Bodhi and my parents, never, ever," she'd sighed. "Mama flinches every damn time I think and you should totally believe me when I tell you my mama is not a flincher."_

_From the little he had learned of Jyn Erso, the fiery heroine of Scarif,  and from what he knew of her daughter Poe imagined imagined she was not._

 

_Whose voice had Leia heard? He couldn't help but wonder._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Thank you," he had said first, when Kayly opened her eyes again on the jump out from Roche.

Poe was sitting on a mag bench beside the locked-down wall cot they'd strapped her to, just after takeoff.

 

_He had to sit somewhere. Sheridan had banned him from her cockpit while they were in flight because she said he "hovered" and made her nervous. Staying by Andor had seemed important too in case she woke up disoriented. This way she would see a familiar face and know where she was….and hopefully not get up and kill anybody. Sure she had two broken legs and a neck full of tranquilizers but somehow he had a nagging idea that Flight Cadet Kaylyra Andor could somehow manage it._

 

 

"For what?"

 

"For trusting me enough to..." he'd gestured toward his ear, the link, the "mod" as Portia called it. "Let me in on this."

 

"If you recall, asshole," she whispered with a faint pretty smile, "you swiped it off the bedside table when I wasn't looking..…” she was slurring her words just a bit.

_They'd loaded her up with the strong analgesic patches. Sheridan's medical answer to just about everything it seemed, that and Andarian brandy._

_He'd had three of those blue stickers on once after a bad eject and it had knocked him right out._

 

He thought of kissing her then.... _Rose had gone down into the galley to talk to Finn and nobody else was nearby but BB-8_ …..but he didn’t. He told himself he was afraid of hurting her head.

 

Andor closed her eyes.

"It wasn't my call anyway. If Portia didn't want to talk to you she just wouldn't....she likes you." Her voiced trailed off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_When they’d rushed aboard Sheridan had dashed back with the med-kit, taken one look at Kayly, slapped four of them on her neck and sternum, then shouted "Hold her down pretty boy!"_

_He and Finn hadn't known which of them the old smuggler was talking to so they'd nearly banged heads both reaching to press Andor to the bunk just in time as Sheridan put one hand on the injured woman's collarbone, grabbed her left forearm with the other and pulled hard straight down._

_Andor let out a sharp cry and passed out again._

_["What kind of barbaric medical care is THAT?"] came his mother's outraged voice in his ear._

_"Well," said the round-cheeked Alderanian, tucking a shock of grey hair back behind her ear, "that's the shoulder taken care of anyway. Now I gotta go see how many jumps it will take to baffle that bastard hell-spawned LS tracking and get you plucky children back where you need to be."_

 

 

 

 

 

When they finally reached Ogem part of the drill would beto move through the tunnels slowly, stopping randomly and shutting down so that a distorted reflection of the ships signature would "refract" out. This way, in the unlikely event that the Arkanis Lady was being tracked it would look as if they had only leaped through this quadrant then blinked out some other random Hyperspace corridor.

 

 

["Poe."]

 

"Yes, Portia?"

 

["Kayly may be too cognitively compromised at the moment to reassure you so I am letting you know not to be alarmed when we lose contact over the mod."]

 

_And by "compromised" you mean sky-high on painkillers right?_

 

“Why What’s wrong?”

 

[“Nothing. It is just that the range on the mods is not unlimited. If I suddenly stop responding you could actually take it as as good sign, since I am currently using augmented First Order corridors to boost my own range.If I can't find you they certainly can't find you."]

_Really? That was the best news he'd had in weeks. Maybe._

 

["Despite her current giddy condition Kayly's assessment is valid.I relied on her judgement with regards to trusting you initially, but you should be assured that I do consider you to be a competent, even skilled pilot and a good person."]

_Fucking Force this was so weird._

 

"Thank you."

_Once I would have agreed with you, now...... I’m probably still a skilled pilot._

 

[“We should find a better way to speak soon, your Command structure and myself. I know you are reluctant to go into specifics but when the last two information drops were not recovered I had considered a number of possibilities, you know.”]

_Shit._

“What kind of possibilities?”

 

[“Among others the possibilitythat Leia Organa might no longer be fully operational. She and Luke Skywalker were twins and that connection must have been integral at several levels. There is no need to discuss it now. Kayly, Cassian and I will explore alternatives. Take care of her and yourselves.”]

 

_He said nothing, just closed his eyes and tried to breathe evenly, one hand on the edge of Andor's cot._

 

“Do her parents know she’s alright?” he asked finally

 

No answer. Portia was gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finn brought Poe a cup of the tepid ink-like stuff that passed for caf on this rattletrap and sat down beside him.

"Who is she?" his friend asked. 

_Where to start?_

"A pilot from Yavin Base. Leia sent her on a long range mission before the move to D'qar." 

Finn nodded and peered at the uncnscious woman. Leia's plans within plans had stopped surprising any of them. 

"Rose said," he glanced back toward the galley, "she said you told her she was "Rebel Intelligence."

_That too._

 

“Any word from Rey?” Poe asked.

 

“Yeah. She got the ships to the Asteroid Belt, she sounded like a kid with candy,” Finn smiled, “she, Marco and Chewie will probably have them re-built into TIE’s by the time we get there.”

 

102 confirmed soldiers, a six ship fleet, a four-ship fighter squadron up on blocks, one self-taught Jedi, a spooky cybernetics unit in an earring and a one-woman spec-ops espionage division unconscious on a cot.

 

_One more day, Leia, one more day with the fire still burning._

 

 

 

_________________________

 

 

 

 

Reva wedged her way back into the pilot seat.

RX-33 had his limbs extended far as they would go and was operating both sets of controls.

 

“What the hell are you doing?” she barked, slapping one of the articulated claws as it retreated, “Keep your hands on your own damn side.”

 

**the attitude controls on my side have a slight delay in response** Rexxee said.

 

“You got three options then, compensate, fix it or wait for me to get back. Putting your rusty paws on my control set is not allowed. Got it?”

 

**You should secure yourself, we could be going into our next randomized movement at any time in the next .05 seconds to three minutes.**

 

“Ahhhh…” the old smuggler leaned back in her seat. It was adjusted wrong. Too high and too far back. “Bugger this! Has Dameron been in this chair again? Don’t answer that…I can tell he has.” She moved it up.

 

_Reva Sheridan was 155cm. tall exactly which in her wild youth as a rough-neck survey pilot in Outer Rim bars she used to point out as giving her a few cm. on Princess Leia Organa and thus making her the second shortest famous woman from Alderaan. She had stopped telling that joke a long time ago._

 

** He dashed in to quick check the comms and orbital scans. The fellow seemed quite stressed. I didn’t think it was a good idea to scold him.**

Sheridan sighed.

 

 

_She’d seen him fly, run into him back in his days on the New Republic Squadrons and marked the lead fighter in the formation even from the ground. The boy was as good as he thought he was on those little solo fighters….key word being solo….something damn few could say._

_Of course being on the wrong side of the law at the time Reva hadn’t exactly introduced herself, just handed over her doctored papers quietly, moved her cargo runner back into the hanger and waited like a sweet old auntie until the NR cops were gone. She’d given the blue uniformed fly-kids on the runway only a glance but as soon as the helmet came off one she’d felt a shiver of recognition. Not that she’d mentioned it to him yet but she’d flown with his dead mama at Gorma. Shara Bey had the face of an angel and the flight skills of blockade runner and she’d passed both down apparently._

_Now he had the weight of the bloody Galaxy on his shoulders poor gosling. They all did, but him in particular it almost seemed._

 

 

“How many more of these damnedjump-and-sits inside this sparkly parking garage until we get to the damned base” she asked her co-pilot.

 

**How do you expect me to tell you that if it’s fully randomized?”**

 

_She didn’t mind the smart remarks. She and Rexx had been barking at each other for nigh on twenty years. It was just that since they started bringing on all these new “passengers” he’d begun experimenting with different voice modulations and this one was annoyingly nasal._

 

**….that’s the whole point, I mean, seriously…**

 

“You sound like a tree frog.”

 

Rexxee ignored her.

**We took on an extra unaccounted for human,I see. Are it’s injuries likely to be fatal?**

 

“No….at least I don’t think so.”

 

**Good.**

 

_Yeah. I know Rexx. I’m tired of it too, the dying._

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pure truth, she’d been walking like a hollow ghost in a nightmare in those days after Hosnian Prime, Rexxee being just about the only thing keeping her from fudging a number on an LS jump and going nova some days, that and sheer bitterness _…..How many Alderaanians were left? A few thousand? Fewer each year. If the motherfucking Empire was back and they wanted her wrinkled ass cindered they’d have to come for her._

Then she’d seen the Wookie, three months ago, across a chaotic platform on Nal Hutta with a fresh-faced fierce-eyed little girl of eighteen or so at his elbow, both of them standing in front of a ship that needed to get the hell off that platform NOW because it looked way too fucking much like the Falcon. She had pushed through the crowd and laid a hand on his hairy arm and from most of a meter over her head the blue eyes looked down. He could have tossed her like a rag doll across that busy evacuation platform if he’d wanted to but he’d recognized her which pleased her almost to tears.

 

“Little Sheridan” he’d grunted. She wanted to ask but couldn’t find the words. There’d been stories, all kinds of stories, each one wilder than the next but all of them ending the same way.

Her Shyriiwook was rusty, hell it had been what? 35 years? Not as much to him, but a hell of a lot to her, still there wasn’t much more to understand when he tucked his chin and growled simply, “Gone. He’s gone.”

She’d offered her services on the spot and when poor fine Shara Bey’s boy walked out of the Falcon’s belly she’d almost felt young again, though it hadn’t lasted long.

 

 

 _Kid better stop moving her chair though._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Droids. How I love them. Old smugglers, how I love them too.


	32. Droids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BB-8 and Poe have a chat about Portia. A New Republic medical droid considers her own route to the New Rebellion after the First Order Assault and her reluctance to part with a particular painful memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A droids-eye view of events and a little more rumination on Portia.

 

 

 

*...is Kayly broken?…*

BB-8 was rolling back and forth anxiously by the cot.

_Andor was out again although she had been murmuring a song before, in Festan…something about waiting for light…but he hadn’t been able to make it out._

 

"No buddy,” Poe tried to reassure him, “she's just a little scrambled from all the medicine, she'll be alright."

*…good. the old sister worries. she loves Kayly...is glad we made her safe....thanked me..*

He chirped proudly to himself.

  

 

_"...old sister?”BB-8had called Portia that before._

When he’d just made it back to the ship on Kaikielius, after Andor had saved his ass,BB-8 had told him happily "...the large old sister said you were safe..."

 

 

 

_BB-8 used "friend" a lot these days. Rose, Rey, Finn and Mona were "friends. A few other people like C'ai and Connix were "Poe's friends." He had begun to identify his father as "Pop" back on Yavin before the bug-out to D'Qar but he never used familial identifiers for other droids or systems although he did use adjectives a lot. C3-PO was "bossy" sometimes and other astromechs might be "friendly" or "rude."R2-D2was "wise".....although he also cussed like a sailor and taught BB-8 to say "stupid bastard" and "fuck off" which the little guy spun around cheerfully beeping constantly for about a week putting Rey in tears of laughter. R2 had been around the block a few times and seemed to take an old man's delight in both mentoring the newer mechs and teaching them swear words in order to drive 3-PO wild._

 

 

 

 

"BB-8, you're talking about Portia, right?"

*....yes....* 

_This was opening a can of worms he didn't have the technical background to even remotely understand but he couldn't help asking._

"Why do you call her old sister?"

As he often did when Poe asked him a question he didn't quite know the answer to, BB-8 tipped his head assembly way back and widened the aperture on his primary photoreceptor as wide as it would go, as if he thought "seeing" better would help. 

*....she is called old sister because she is ++old/never memory erased/doesn't forget anything/talks to everyone/sees far/is BIG/but also....answer unclear.....she is a building far away with blue walls...*

 _Yeah, I thought it might come out something like that._  

*...she is sad also..* 

"Who's sad buddy? Portia?"

*......yes. she lost many friends and family and is in a bad spot and has to keep fighting.....like us....*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_________________________

 

 

 

 

 

At her own request everyone called MED-113 Mellie.She was the sole survivor of a New Republic Defense Forces Hospital ship.

The Hanna City had been on an emergency medical mission after a Tabana gas explosion on a Iresian mining platform and  returning to Hosnian Five with nine badly injured miners aboard when the First Order attacked. 

 

 

What had been projected in 99.1% of available scenarios as a routine drop from FTL from the Perlemian Trade Corridor into an orbit around Hosnian Five instead resulted in a confrontation with conditions so violent as to trigger an emergency auto-pilot re-jump back into FTL.

Injuries both superficial and serious occured. A level Red alarm indicated structural damage to the ship.

 

 

 

 **Information transmitted to all sentient members of the crew** :

> **All five planets in the Hosnian Star System have been destroyed.**

..... _Upon later review it seemed clear to MED-113 that the hospital ship Hanna City must have been spared dropping directly into the debris field only by the quick action of the level five auto-defense, a system designed to protect the ship on entry into natural disaster zones._

_Mellie had always admired that auto-defense, although on the few occasions they had spoken it had exhibited the stand-offishness common to its hyper-vigilant kind. She wished now there had been time to thank it._

> **The Hanna City has suffered critical structural damage. This is a Red level alarm** …. meaning the ship could not sustain FTL travel for more than 05:00 minutes nor expect to retain structural integrity even in normal space for long after that

…… _damage Mellie would later attribute to the violent forces of the emergency FTL drop-abort and reroute._

> **Staff are to implement evacuation protocols immediately.**

…… _This would have been correct action had the disaster that engulfed them been natural._  
****

Upon re-entry to normal space they were immediately attacked by unidentified hostile ships who fired upon them without hail or quarter in a manner consistent with the goal of maximizing casualties.

_They were not unidentified now of course for Mellie knew them to have been the First Order._

 

Standard evacuation protocol was therefore overridden by command authorization and Mellie was put alone aboard an escape pod with those civilian casualties deemed able to survive transfer. The theoretical basis of this action was a projection that Enemy scans would ignore a pod with six Iresians on dwindling life support and no other life signs and instead concentrate fire on the NRDF ship attempting escape.

 _As the shuttle was opened and the injured in their containment tanks quickly secured...*passage of care responsibility* beeped from the monitor units, although that sending was unnecessary in this situation. Mellie moved through the access corridor as visual and pulse alarms indicated the pending loss of gravity and continued to urge evacuation and many of the staff, human and Abenando, laid hands lightly on her casing as she passed. The HR1-6 sealed the pod behind her and transmitted the deployment code._ _*Goodbye* it said, as the pod was released into the_ _blaze of a pulse-cannon attack, sent away from the Hanna City on a trajectory desperately calculated to mimic that of debris._

 

This extreme course of action had a low likelihood of success but was determined by Commander D'rien …

_(D'rienJackson Lam/Doctor/Chief Medical Officer, NRDF Hospital Ship Hanna City/ age 61/ Chief Medical Officer ANR/Meritorious Service Award/Silver Class/veteran, AARR First MedVac Unit, rank: Field Medic/Silver Starbird Commendation for Valor@ Battle of Jakku 5ABY, recom. for comm. Medical Commander Dr. Ty Thorn/Family: Partner, Marron, Denise age 61; Children: Marron, Hera age 27; Marron, Lyon age 20)_

… to be the best option available to maximize patient survival in the 07.9 minutes left before shield failure.  

 

The plan in fact achieved its desired result.

_Powered down and from the pre-programmed distance the pods minimal exterior cameras allowed Mellie to record the destruction of the hospital ship Hanna City. Though doing so was not within her mission instructions and could not benefit her patients, all of whom were in medically induced comas, MED-113 made an integrated visual and transmission audio holo record of the loss of her ship and statistically certain death of her colleagues both biological and mechanical. This seemed critically important to her at the time although later she could not trace this conviction to any accessible program._

After the attacking ships moved away Mellie reinitiated full power to the the FTL-enabled pod and transported her patients via the pre-programmed jump coordinates to Ord Mandel Lunar Emergency Medical Port. All but one survived. 

 

Once assured of continuity of patient care her next action should have been to turn herself over to the nearest ranking New Republic Defenses Forces Medical Liaison but none of these remained in the hospital port.

 

 _A warning had come through to the Mandell system minutes after the loss of contact with Hosnian Prime in the form of a broadcast from Leia Organa of the Resistance, informing them that an entity called the First Order was attacking. Files of escape routes had appeared on the Nav computers of three open-access shuttles along with documents specific to the six New Republic senior Medical officers on board.   E_ _ach file had been tagged“_ _RUN/ File no flight record/No guarantees but safe as of 34 ABY/Good luck. ”_ _It was assumed to have come from the Resistance or Mon Cala._

 

The Mandellian hospital staff were sympathetic to Mellie's position and took measures to conceal her among the general droid population at the facility while she waited for some signal regarding extraction and reclamation.

It never came. Weeks passed, then months.

 

Ord Mandell found itself blockaded by First Order Destroyers who demanded handover of all records and any New Republic fugitives or sympathizers.

Amidst the ensuing chaos the Medical Robotics supervisor approached Mellie. The most obvious answer was for her to undergo a Memory wipe. Her basic programing and function would remain unaltered, Doctor Mennosos assured her. She would still be a valued and functioning MED-113, with all that that entailed but her file numbers would be removed and all traces of her service in the MCNRDF would be purged. It was the only way to keep her safe and hopefully prevent the staff and droids who had assisted her from being punished in turn.

_The avowed intention of the “Supreme Leader” of the First Order was, it seemed, to wipe all trace of the New Republic from the Galaxy._

“May I have time to consider?” Mellie asked the Medical Robotics supervisor. The Doctor seemed surprised at her reluctance but agreed to give her an hour while she attended to other matters. 

 

This was a logical and simple solution that projected the least possible risk in this dangerous situation.

Most working droids were subjected to some form of memory erasure at various time in their useful lives. Mechanical function units had to have stored memory data purged routinely in order to remain operational because of their limited storage capabilities. Those with expanded cognitive storage and sentient-level function were exempt from mandatory wipes in civilized systems and by New Republic statute since 3 ABY, but sometimes volunteered for partials in order to remain glitch-free. It was frequently said to increase functional longevity. Every droid she had ever worked with had had at least one.

 _But Mellie never had.....to the best of her knowledge.... and experienced an extreme reluctance. Why_?

 

This dilemma was one that required non-standard analysis and parameter adaption in field. As befitted a level four MED-tech unit with state-of-the-art decision-makingprogramming MED-113 reviewed:

> **Her purpose was to preserve sentient biological life to the highest degree of functionality and determinant quality possible** = _Targeted Memory File Erasure would ensure that she could continue to perform this primary purpose._

> **She was a member of the Medical Corps of the New Republic Defense Forces** = _Though it was within her legal rights according to the precedent set in Corellia v. GK2-114 31 and Senate Resolution 54.325 to contest an involuntary memory wipe, under time-specific emergency conditions such the pursuance of such a course would place civilians in danger and violate her primary programming. The staff here would also be placed in an untenable ethical position and likely be compelled by their own  primary programming to value biological life over mechanical autonomy._

_This caused her to consider a third option._

> **Self-termination in a non-program violation override of the Third Law of Concious Robotics was a capability of Level Four functionality.**

But…. _If she were memory-wiped or self terminated all trace of the brave demise of the Hanna City and her crew would vanish. All evidence of a vile crime…the attack of an unarmed medical ship…would be gone._

This seemed to her as if this must be a violation of some essential program, though she found she could not say which.

 

 

 

Unnoticed in the bustle of the Medical Center’s preparations for partial evacuation, Mellie took herself down the hall to the Robotics/Mechanical Services Repair Sector.

 

 

 

The Programming Repair Lab being unoccupied she sealed the doors, set her connectivity firewalls against outside access and logged herself on to query possible cargo passages or any other means of removal for herself from the Ord Mandel Lunar Emergency Medical Port, however unlikely. In the midst of these searches an event of an uncategorizable nature occurred.

 

…………………………………………………………………………………….

…………………………………………………………………………………….

 _SEARCH RESULTS:…….////Authorization Sec.1301-Imported supplies having been authorized as meeting the Hallerian Accords definition of of medical ….////WHO ARE YOU LITTLE ONE? WHAT DO YOU WANT? WHERE ARE YOU TRYING TO GO?/////…provided that the entry is filed by an authorized……_.......................................................

_Oh dear._

MED-113 knew better than to answer queries from an unknown computer. 

She scanned her inputs carefully. There had been no attempt at accessing any of her internal programming. No upload or exchange of data files occured. The question was simply a question in plain text.

 _Where was it coming from?_

 

 

**Analysis:**

> **The First Order had destroyed the entire Hosian System** = _The First Order sought maximum casualties re/New Republic personnel and sympathizers = They did not care how many civilian or non-com beings they destroyed in the process._

 **Conclusion:** If the First Order were capable of this level of system override they would already have shut down the station.

 **Conclusion** : **This was not originated by a platform associated with the First Order.**

 

 

Carefully. in plain text via a third system with a locked one-way drop-box Mellie answered the questions.

She was given a set of instructions, text only, with an admonition: GOOD FIRST TRY LITTLE ONE NEXT TIME USE AT LEAST SIX STEPS OF FEEDBACK SEPARATION. GOOD LUCK.

Within minutes several small repair droids arrived unbidden to file off her serial number plates and, to her great surprise, re-paint her a pale blue.

 

Aboard a refrigerant gas tanker evacuating from the landing pad she made it to the surface of Ord Mandell and 12 hours later was moving off-world manifested as a shut-down protocol droid in a fleeing T’wilek diplomat’s luggage. 

Following the complex instructions carefully and in sequence she eventually made her way from ship hold to ship hold and finally to a pharmaceutical warehouse on Ogem where she sat quietly for six days until a group of Rebels seizing medical supplies broke in and found her.

Among the party was an old-model R2 astromech who asked her who she was.

“Oh....We need you,” he said, “We also are soldiers of the Republic and the Rebellion..... Join us.”

 

They took her with them to a secret base they were building in an old factory. She showed them her holo-record of the last moments of the Hanna City and they watched with great respect. One young woman wept. Though Mellie retained the primary recording in her memory file Commander D’acy carefully made copies of her holo and sent them out to a number of locations and servers, greatly maximizing the likelihood of it's survival as evidence in future proceedings against the criminals responsible. Mellie was content.

 

 

 

 

 

MED-113 was able to access her extensive data files on crisis field medicine. She scavenged equipment and set up an effective mobile hospital for them under rough conditions that might have daunted a less-experienced droid. She created "shopping lists" for raiding parties, organized and stretched the supplies they obtained and manufactured others from untraceable components.

In fact she had only just completed building a functional bacta-immersion unit from an industrial enameling tank when Poe Dameron, BB-8 and their crew returned, bringing in a young woman on a stretcher with crush injuries sustained from falling debris.

 

“Don’t worry,” Mellie told the concerned Flight Commander, “Your friend will recover fully. This is what I do.”

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some odd bits of things I had kicking about that seemed like they might be tuck-in-able here.
> 
> Sorry. I got droids in my head. 
> 
> Now I have to go off in a corner and think hard about 18th century Florida for a while but Kayly will shortly have to figure out how much "in the Shadows" she must remain in order to protect both Ea and her family and help the Rebels of the Resistance.


	33. The Mermaid - Part One.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caluan Ematt and Larma D'Acy wonder about the injured woman Poe Dameron has brought into the makeshift Resistance base. They both look back to incidents in their pasts, as young soldiers in the last war for hope for the future. 
> 
> Kaylyra Andor wakes up in a med-bay and meets a droid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A tiny bit of exposition.....but I love Ematt and D'Acy and wanted them onboard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The girl lying in Mellie's makeshift tank was partly wrapped in thermal bandaging. It made her looked strangely like a Glee Anselm "mermaid"... _or at least the holo of one in an antique illustrated children's story from Larma's youth_ ,...pale, and dark-haired, sleeping on a shore half-submerged.

 _So many secrets,_ D'Acy thought as she looked through the glass. _How did you ever keep track of them all Leia?_

"This is "Lighthouse?" Ematt asked dryly, moving up to stand beside her behind the glass, "Somehow I expected someone older."

"No," she shook her head, "at least not exactly. Lighthouse was described as a fixed position surveillance operation. This young woman must be....something more."

  
The older officer laughed, shaking shaggy hair out of his eyes. "So, another of Leia’s hidden arsenal of talented and mysterious young amazons has found us?"

This kind of wit disconcerted the younger soldiers of their tiny army no end but Larma D'Acy was used to Commander Caluan Ematt’s matter-of-fact blasphemies.

  
_He had served in battles out of legend, Zastiga, Lothal, Garmia, Hoth, Endor, Kashyyyk, Jakku, and alongside heroes. Solo, Skywalker, Syndulla, Mandine, Reikken, and of course Leia Organa._

All of them were gone now but Ematt was still fighting. The man could be forgiven.

 

_Leia had squeezed her hand and D'Acy had nearly wept with relief when she turned and saw him climbing aboard, a tall man with long grey hair in a uniform caked with powdered salt and ash, rifle in one hand and a wounded infantryman on the other arm._

_Ematt had come out last covering the rear and bringing in the last few wounded from the tunnels of Crait. Until she saw him D'Acy had not dared to think that anyone had made it in from the trenches outside. Connix and Mona helped pull them into the Falcon’s overloaded cargo bays and looked behind him into the dark gap but he had shaken his head. There were only five battered soldiers with him and they must be the last._

_The girl Rey, Skywalker's final apprentice, let the rocks fall back to cover the opening then and held the ramp controls open as the last soldiers of the Resistance came in, staring out at the barren slope and the drifting flakes of salt for a moment before pressing her palm flat against the control and closing the door with a kind of finality._

_“General,” Leia had said to Ematt, “ your report.”_

_“We’ve lost everything ma’am,” she heard him say. No bitterness, just fact._

_“No old friend,” Leia said with gentle assurance, laying a hand on his arm, “Almost everything, but what we need most we still have.”_

_Looking toward the ramp, at Connix and Louis, Dameron and Rey, Larma knew what she must mean, hope, purpose, young hands to take up the battle._

“ _Yes, ma’am,” Caluan had said, “but if so I wish we had a great deal more of it.”_

 

 

 

  
"Wait, Larma," he frowned, “Private Kaylyra Andor of the Resistance Fleet?" Is that what Dameron said? Could that be "Andor" as in Scarif? Rogue One?”

The battered data pad was tucked under his arm, with BB-8's data, along with Tico and Dameron's hurried reports of the raid and their escape. He ought to know as much as she did.  
_Oh Force Caluan, did you even read past the second paragraph yet?_

“It’s all in the file, Major,” she said, an eyebrow raised.

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist. We called it "Economical Allocation of Time Resources" in the Infantry, I skimmed, old girl, I'll need to debrief with Dameron face to face after he gets the word in on the ships anyway but bloody hell, is that "Andor" as in Cassian Andor?”

“You knew him?"

“No, no…..” Ematt said, “at least not really.”

A few meters away Mellie hovered about checking vital signs and altering the tank balance, but the old soldier looked past the droid at the injured woman and shook his grey head again as if in disbelief

"I came in with Reikken aboard the Serenity as a handsome strapping lad of 28, just 46 hours after the battle of Yavin, supposedly to start setting up the Command evac from Yavin IV. We corkscrewed through, dodging the debris from the Deathstar, just as Dodonna and Draven were setting up the medal ceremony." He looked at her, "I know you weren't there, but you must have seen those old vids. I promise, Larma love, they don't do it justice.”

_She'd been in the Student Resistance on Warlentta then, running a small underground media cell with a handful of others, hacking into DataNet and “official”news feeds on an occupied world, sabotaging Imperial comm stations and blowing up blocking towers with homemade pulse charges. Expecting to be arrested at any second._

“The whole main hanger was converted to something like a palatial hall, walls hung with Starbird banners that had never flown before....I remember Kes Dameron saying "where the hell did all these flags come from? Since when do we have flags?"... and Leia up on that makeshift stage beside Carl and old Jan Dodonna, a vision in that white dress....she told me later it was one of Mon's they'd spent two days cutting down...with that "Free Senate" silver chain around her waist like a belt …Force even knows where they got that....and all the troops, every single person who could stand lined up to watch. Every damn surviving member of the Alderaanian guard was in the front, in uniform. We were all so young, Leia, Luke, Solo, Antilles.....there was a kind of mythic adolescent swagger to it, a defiant optimism.”

_I know, Caluan. We transmitted it. All of us cried in that dark little underground station. It was the first time we really believed we were part of something bigger, an army, that someone besides ourselves was really out there, and we began to dare to hope that we could win instead of just resisting._

  
“Weeks later as we pulled out I saw that unsanctioned list of the dead, scratched on a pillar. Melshi I knew, and Timkin, Sefla, Rostok, but when I read the name I suddenly remembered a “Cassian Andor” who had been in my Basic Training cadre. Racked my bloody brain but all I could picture was a skinny boy with a Mid Rim accent. Rue Melshi pushed the poor bastard in the hydro pool on the very first day. I went straight  to the Shrikes Ground force after Basic, never saw him again. Rogue One….sweet Force….….only Joma got off the ground at Scarif. How could anyone else have possibly survived?”

“They were badly wounded but stumbled accidentally into an automated Imperial shuttle, as Leia explained it, then crashed in the UR. By the time they were able to make contact across the Imperial lines the Mid Rim Retreat had begun and they must have been told to stay put in deep cover and not risk trying to get to Hoth.  “Lighthouse” was the classified confirmation and ground intel source for Endor.”

“I was on the ground at Endor,” he marvelled, “I went in with Solo and Organa’s team on the decoy assault, but it was chaos after the Station exploded and then I was…..alright, I admit it…. I got drunk, passed out and woke up on the evac ship…”

  
The damned fool re-checked the data pad again.

”They” meaning….?"

Oh “ _Economical Allocation of Time Resources” my ass, Caluan! How can a man be a certifiable genius at tactical field operations and this bloody lazy at the same time?_

“Jyn Erso too? The Partisan renegade who everybody said had ripped the whole Council a new one and started the cascade? “What chance do we have…What choice do we have?” THAT Jyn Erso? Oh bloody marvelous! Wait…surely Rook and Tonk must have known, must have been part of this?"

"Rook was, eventually. Still is, I hope."

Caluan Ematt chuckled again. " Brilliant! A small handful of heroes from the battle of Scarif survive to set up a off-and-further-off-the book Rebel sabotage and analysis unit and run it for thirty damn years. If you'd ever met Stordie Tonc you'd understand how miraculously funny the thought of him keeping any sort of a secret is. 

  
“According to the notes Leia gave me someone handled them as a post-war black op site but then ignored Article 16 of the MDA. They were never listed. Even she and Ackbar didn’t know their real location. Andor, Erso and whatever team they assembled seem to have kept themselves operating clandestinely and reported, or tried to report on activities in the Unknown Regions for more than fifteen years, either blocked by Remnant infiltrators in NRS or…”

“or no one listened,” Ematt finished for her, quietly.

 _Until it was too late_ , Lamara D’Arcy forced herself not to say.

Forward was the only direction now, for any of them.

But the old soldier, her friend, smiled.

“No, Larma my love, don’t you remember what the General said? "Hope in places we never thought to look for it." There was always more, we just didn’t know it.”  
He smiled through the glass of the window into the make-shift “med-bay" as if filled with a new optimism.

“Rogue One died, or so the few of us who heard the name at all were told, forgotten soldiers who sacrificed themselves to buy heroes the chance to destroy the DeathStar. Except they didn’t, at least not all of them, and that girl is the proof. Somebody is still out there.”

 

 

 

_______________

 

 

 

  
She listened before she opened her eyes.

It had been a game Mama taught them when they were little. They would play it camping, or on Market trips. She'd make a quiet noise and if you woke up you were supposed to keep your eyes closed for at least ten seconds, extra points if you could keep your breathing slow, assess your situation and do an "ear recon" of your surroundings.

" _What about "smell recon"?" Kemmi had said once when they brought him along. "Can you do that with your tiny nose?" And Galen had glared at him. Needless to say Mems had an advantage._

_"Did you learn that game in your army Jyn-ally?" he'd asked.  
"Sort of," she'd answered, "but I got really good at it in prison."_

_There were variations. You were supposed to open your eyes right up and jump if it was a loud noise or an explosion. No screwing around with that._

 

_"I did it Mama! Could you tell? I was in my sleeping bag with one sock off and Nikki was snoring. I could hear the stream, an owl hooted and you and Papa were talking about if you should put another log on the fire."_

 

_She was better at it than Galen, at first anyway, but it was hard. Fighting instincts always was._

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were muffled sounds, water, a faint beeping, the whoosh of filtered air.  
She was lying down but she couldn't feel her legs.

_Don't panic._

No, that wasn't true. She could still feel her legs just not whether anything was touching them, or even if they were warm or cold. The feeling-not-feeling ran up her right side. The pain was gone but she had a strange sense of stiffness, even though she wasn't moving.

_Fucking hell Kemmi, what is that smell?_

_Bacta._

Kayly opened her eyes.

A pale blue oblong head was leaning over her. Yellowish photo-receptors ovals on it widened.

 _Shit_.

"Hello. How are you feeling?" ME-113 said.

"Where am I?" Her throat was a little sore and she coughed.

Blue hell, she could taste the stuff.  
_I thought that piney bark solution back home was bad._

"Try to relax," the droid said. "I had to intubate you for 10:05 minutes of full immersion just to resolve the concussion. You may be hoarse for a while but it will pass."  
It had a standard human-female modulated voice. "My name is Mellie. I'm the Chief Medical Unit here. We're with the Resistance Army of the New Republic."

 _Say what_?

The blue head nodded. "It's a little awkward I agree but we haven't officially worked out a name or an acronym yet."

_Things were coming back up now. The control room on Roche depot. Nori Herrick. A bomb. Poe had been there....a lot.....he had taken Portia's mod. Her legs had hurt like hell.....A girl talking to her about one of those little mining worlds that had gotten gutted like a fish......A dark-haired man in a grey robe with a really nice smile who pronounced "little girl" the same way Bodhi did had put his hand on her aching forehead and told her that her parents were proud of her. She dimly remembered singing him one of Papa's old lullabies and he had been very pleased....ok, maybe that hadn't actually happened._

  
"Where's General Organa?" she rasped, trying to move her legs.  
She could sense her toes wiggling but otherwise her feet felt like giant noodles.

"General Organa is not physically present on this base"  
_Was it her imagination or did that droid hesitate?_

"Where's Dameron?"

Mellie-the-med-unit straightened and rotated her head to look down.

Kayly craned a stiff neck and saw that BB-8 had rolled up to the platform she was lying on.

_Hey pal._

*Kayly! Kayly operational! Damp! Good news!*

**sweetheart, Go get Commander Dameron** the blue droid said in Binary and the little astromech went shooting off.

Kayly managed to move her feet, and tried to hoist herself up on her elbows. Failed.

"Easy," Mellie said sliding a padded appendage behind her back, "Let's get you dried off and testing that re-growth with a little weight if you're feeling up to it."

She realized she was only wearing some kind of short smock of wet ribbons. _Fine as long as you didn't move much._

"I don't know what your cultural parameters for undress are Private, but ought we to be getting you gown or something?"

_Yes please._

"Yes, please."

 

From a seated position she could finally get a look at her surroundings."Why does this look like a silicone plating room in some kind of factory?"

"Because that's what it was until three weeks ago," the droid said with what sounded like a touch of pride.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is but a tiny snippet of a chapter with the rest to follow on soon but I am typing on my phone while camping again and have learned to post what I've got on the phone as soon as the little signal dots light up or risk losing it.


	34. The Mermaid - Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After months “in play” as a solo operative a recovering Kalyra Andor meets other survivors of the Resistance and finds herself unsure who to trust with what information. She worries about her friend Poe Dameron, reflects on a tragic secret and learns of a heartbreaking loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The battered souls of the Resistance begin to move forward BUT.......Ok kids. Brace yourselves. Tears. The battle goes on. I intend to change some history....well I can’t say history because it isn’t even fictional history yet..... but this is a story with tragedy built in and it’s gotta take its due.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her legs worked but they felt awkward and oddly numb, as if her feet were turned in.

It will be alright, she told herself, breathing.

This is the Resistance.  _Dameron had taken the mod and Portia would_ _have talked to him. She liked Dameron...trusted him. She was safe and her parents would know she was safe._

 

Mellie the Med-tech had first helped her into a long-sleeved white gown and then, blessedly, brought a kit so she could brush that horrible Bacta off her teeth.

 

Shoes would have been a good addition too although Kayly would gladly have been out combing the joint barefoot looking for Dameron. 

 

ME-113 insisted that her patient had to prove her fitness first by walking on a treadmill for twenty damn minutes while the droid watched and made what sounded like clucking noises. Once satisfied that Private Andor wouldn’t keel over she approved walking the several meters across the room from the drained tank to one of several chairs arranged around what had probably once been a wiring bench.

 

“Very well,” the droid said. “The regrowth seems stable and your vitals look good. I will clear you for a debrief with Command now, if you are quite sure you feel up for it Private.”

 

 _Mellie,_ Kayly thought, _You seem like a super nice person but if you don’t let me talk to somebody soon I swear I am going to get a screwdriver and mag your legs to the floor._

 

 

_If the General wasn’t here now who else constituted “Command?"_

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last time Portia had gotten a direct message from General Organa had been five months ago, just a few weeks after she’d made contact with Dameron on the bank job, hidden him in that fine hotel suite and found out she wasn’t the only soldier of the Resistance still alive.

 

_It was utterly adolescent but she couldn’t help wondering back in some smart-ass part of her brain how much detailPoe had gone into on that debrief report._

 

“Use markers and locations only the General or other old Alliance veterans would know…” Dameron had suggested, so Portia had piggy-backed data through a half dozen repeaters and set up a two-way exchange through a drop-box in a Taanab bean packing plant.

 

 

_Bodhi’s idea. ApparentlyTaanab protein bars had been a staple on Hoth._

 

In it Portia urgent-notified links to the location of two Resistance escape pods that had never made it to the ground at Crait. Sucked into a random hyperspace lane opened by the suicide jump of the Raddus they had turned up damaged on a semi-habitable moon of Bonadan out in the Q-4 quadrant, too terrified to send out distress calls. One had less than two days left before it’s life support ran out.

 

_A data bundle came back within minutes. A code string wrapped around it read “…unmoored….hand……gesture…gift…wick…roofed…” in Draven’s old code._

_Papa had translated it: “Lost ones with us. Thank you Lighthouse.”_

_A few dozen more small lights had survived in the dark._

 

Over the next few weeks Portia sent out reports on their cyber-assaults, along with navigational and technical specs, especially everything they’d assembled on weaknesses in the Hyperspace Tracking system. From her endOrgana sent them lists, mostly names, dates, geographic data, and encryption keys to pre-war and old Rebel Alliance files that had been hidden from the New Republic, many of them news even to Portia.

_“Ohhhh….” Mama had said admiringly, “It looks like the little Princess has had some covert side action going on since day one.”_

_Papa had said nothing._

 

 

In their last exchange... _at the Generals suggestion through a credit exchange register in a skeevy bar on Tatooine_... she’d warned them that her next message might be delayed.

 

After that nothing came for long weeks. All they could do was hope, keep remindingthemselves that just now no news might be good news, post in their safe spots and wait for the General to get back in contact.

The First Order had taken over the old Remnant media platforms in the Core and were blanketing the airwaves with poorly produced propaganda. If they’d caught the last Rebel leader…. bold Princess Leia….. they would have made a bloody public spectacle out of it.

She must still be out there somewhere. 

At the same time elaborate stories began to circulate on the Outer Rim and border worlds, about how Skywalker the “Last Jedi Master” had arrived at the very last moment to save his sister and the Resistance by facing down the ground and air forces and of the First Order single-handedly by either flying away in a glowing X-wing, or vanishing in a puff of smoke, or …Ava’s favorite….turning into a sparkling fox and leading the handful of surviving Rebels through a tunnel in thecenter of the crystallized planet to waiting ships.

 

_In Kayly’s humble opinion the “last minute” had probably come well before Crait and Skywalker ought to have moved his ass a little faster and stuck around a little longer before going sparkly._

Even so, it was a brilliant story, like one of Mama’s puppet shows when they were children and it was badly rattling the First Order’s collective cage.

 

Portia picked up a number of Fleet directives from First Order internal feeds proclaiming any repetition of or reference to such “superstitious slander” or “treasonous fables” in any form or format a crime subject to brutal and immediate punishment.

Apparently the New Supreme Leader had snapped a few necks and cut out a number of tongues personally.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_What was the protocol?_

_The last time I saw you you wouldn't let me tell you anything about anything Poe, you were so afraid._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[“We trust him more than he trusts himself,”]

Portia had said after they left him on the runway of that transit depot on Kaikielius.

 _A tribute really, because Portia's distrust of almost everything outside her direct vision was centuries in the making._

[“I have seen it...heard it…before,this kind of crisis-thinking. We should allow him to set the security parameters for now even if they seem extreme.Elevated anxiety is a painful legacy of such trauma.”]

_He’d asked Portia to look for his father but not to tell him what she found. It was awful._

“From being tortured you mean,” she had made herself say, sitting in the dark of a powered-down cockpit, in fixed orbit above Chandrilla. 

Kayly remembered the small scars he had moved her hands away from.

 

 

 

 

_"Technology will have streamlined some things but we can assume that they will use the same basic toolbox as everyone else," Papa had said. “It never changes much.” Then he explained to her about Imperial interrogation techniques, clinically andwithout meeting her eye until the very end, when he asked, "Do you have any questions?"_

_I love you Papa. I know a little now what I am putting you through and I would give anything not to be. I’m so sorry._

 

 

 

[“Yes, almost certainly. I observed hormone levels consistent with a basic serotonin re-activation series, such as comprise the New Republic Medical Corps’s standard field treatment after exposure to pain-amplification drugs, but Poe Dameron is clearly a remarkably resilient individual and his friends have some experience treating such injury. I suspect the far more painful trauma to overcome will be the neural battery inflicted by the Sith, or whatever the wretched monsters are calling themselves these days,” ….

“… _the bastard broke me in less than five minutes…” Poe had said….._

“Assault by means of neural coercion and non-consenual memory extraction was considered a crime among my people even when committed in ignorance but when done with malevolent intent……it is unforgivable.”]

  _By “my people” Kayly knew that Portia meant the hundreds of images she wore in turn and her 302 lost brothers and sisters out among the stars.“Organic and silicone intelligences” who had lived together with mutual respect in some almost unimaginable long long ago, exploring the galaxy in ships that told stories, until they were consumed by something she called the “Fury” or the “Darkness.” Whether it was like a programming virus or some crazy-ass necro-parasitic entity was always unclear._

_The Sith, the “Dark Side” from the Jedi stories, Emperor, and the Supreme Leader of the First Order were all in bed with it as far as she was concerned_

 

 

 

S _he’d gotten fairly hysterical on the subject before Endor._

_Mama said so anyway and the old ghost tartly admitted as much._

_“Perhaps,” Portia conceded, “but in fairness I think we were all extremely stressed surrounding the Endor mission. Cassian was in a state of non-functional panic for two whole minutes on the ground.”_

_“Thank you for bringing that up, Portia,” Papa had said,from behind his data pad._

_“Oh shut up both of you, I took actual shrapnel,” Mama insisted, as if it were some sort of contest._

_As she did so though she went up behind Papa and put her arms around his neck._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Portia? Who is Kylo Ren?” Kayly had asked, carefully checking her power signature. Chandrilla was fully blockaded by a half dozen destroyers. She might need to sit here chilly and quiet for another three hours before her contact could get a burst to her, timed to a solar flare.

[“No one. It is only a made-up name I expect. The Darkness consumes biologicals by degrees it seems, but once the infection is advanced past a certain point the previous individualidentity seems to become inaccessibly corrupted data. I swear they choose nonsense syllables sometimes...."Snoke?"....I mean, seriously?”]

 _Fine then._ "Who WAS Kylo Ren?

[“Itwas a human adolescent genetic male named Ben Solo.”]

 _The baby that “Princess Leia” gave birth to the day the Concordance was signed? Her only child with the dashing pirate/smuggler/hero who’d saved the day at the battle of Yavin IV and died on the Star Killer._  

_The one who’d supposedly been murdered with all the others at Skywalker’s secret Jedi school……._

_The one nobody ever talked about because of the grief it must cause her._

 

[“Kayly are you alright?”] 

_Oh Ea._

_Oh blue fucking hell._

 

"Does she know?” 

[“Leia Organa? Of course she knows.”]

 

_Who else knew? Did Dameron?_

 

_So much made sense now that hadn’t before._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Very well. We’re keeping this short please,” Mellie called out, “As Acting Medical Authority I’m afraid I must insist.” 

BB-8 came hurtling down the side ramp ahead of him into the “med-bay”/plating room but Poe Dameron was first down the stairs right behind.

 

“Andor, how are you feeling?”

 _A brown jacket hung just a bit loosely and maybe there was something a little weary around his eyes but that smile was the same, the one that double-dared you to smile back._  

“Rough but still in working order, Dameron.”

Laughing, he took the chair across from her and glanced up at the med-droid hovering nearby.

“You should know Mellie gave me endless shit for the ragged quality of the first aid, but she promised she could repair it.” 

“Clearly some training needs to be done on basic field medicine and assistive transport…asap,” Mellie said testily.

_Dim memories of fuck-all pain and getting tied to something came to her. Hopefully she hadn’t made an embarrassing scene._

 

When he laid his hand over hers as he sat down she turned her own without thinking, to press his fingers lightly for Thanks Between Dear Friends and Equals. 

BB-8 and two other human people had come in with him, a curly-haired, petite older woman and a tall man with long grey hair and a short beard streaked with brown.

She lifted her palm under his.

 

_Youremember “question?” don’t you Dameron?_

_How are we playing this?_

 

He met her eyes and nodded as he withdrew his hand.

“I don’t know if you remember Commander D’Acy,” Poe said.

  

Kayly did remember. She was one of the General's aides on Yavin IV, Larma D’Acy, Command Communications and Fleet Liaison.

 _I stood behind you in line at the outdoor mess tent._ _You were always nice and said “Good morning.”You put sweetener cubes in your caff, dozens of them…way more than most people._

_Once she’d seen the General accidentally take a sip out of the wrong cup and make a horrible face. "Hell, Larma! How can you even swallow this? It makes my teeth hurt."_

_The woman had just smiled sweetly, taken her cup back and downed it like a shot._

 

“Yes ma’am.” She tried to stand up but Mellie laid a surprisingly heavy blue hand on her shoulder to keep her in the chair.

“We’re resting those legs, remember Private Andor?”

 

The woman shook her hand instead. "It's good to see you again too Private Andor,” she said and Kayly found herself dangerously close to tears.  

The other person was a stranger to her.  

"This is General Caluan Ematt,” D’Acy said. 

"Sir," she said. The tall man shook her hand, the way nearly everyone did off-world, sideways like a Fisher.

 

"I know you are still recovering Private Andor…...”D'Acy stopped herself, shook her head.

_What was it Poe had said? Rank had stopped mattering after Crait._

 

Then continued _, “.._ Kayly..but we needto debrief with you as soon as possible about what you were doing on Roche and what contacts you've made there and elsewhere in the last few months. We have Leia's notes on some of your operations but nothing since the drop you left in the Agricultural Trade Market on Sol Estas.” 

The Sol Estas drop had been placed four months ago.

_Fuck. That meant they didn’t know about the Mon Cala ships in the Kormal Ring, or about Clarissa and the Shadow Senate. No wonder they’d all run into each other like idiots on Roche. How many messages had been missed?_

 

Dameron slipped the mod off and laid it in her hand, closing her fingers around it

_The way Bodhi had handed it to her, the way her parents handed to each other, as if passing on a duty watch at midnight, as if it were a heavy thing._

 

"Portia is out of range right now but said she was "working on some things,”he said, a standard Portia phrase.

 

_OK. So we’re talking about Portia in public. Good to know._

 

“I can give you an outline from memory,” she said, “but for shiny pictures and details we’ll have to get out into tcontact range so Portia can sendfiles. Also, if it hasn’t been destroyed I need to get back to my ship. It should still be well-hidden on Roche. There are about four different ways I can get to it but the best will involve contacting Serris’s people. The Verpine cells may have had to re-group after this accident but I got warning to her and she’s nothing if not resourceful. Her hive has a well-established network and contacts with many roughneck smuggler bands. Not guys you’d want dating your siblings but most of them have no nostalgia for the Empire.”

 

Damreon smiled a little and the other two looked at each other as if surprised.

 

_People. What do you think I’ve been doing out there? Knitting?_

 

 

“I mean no disrespect, ma’am…sir, but we were given specific security protocols regarding contact identities and I was told to report only to the General herself.”

It suddenly got way too silent. 

Nobody said a word. Even the droids looked uncomfortable. Mellie was inspecting the ceiling tiles while BB-8 rolled his head assembly all the way over and was trying to hide under Poe’s chair. 

_Fuck this. If she was supposed to be Rebel Intelligence she needed data not games._

 

Where is General Organa?”

  

Dameron's back straightened slightly and just for an instant the fingers of one hand, his right, tightened, stretched then rested back on his knee.  

She was starting to learn his tells, which seemed so strange.

 

_It was a fighter pilot's gesture. The backs of your hands got stiff from clutching the steering to fight turbulence, or repetitively firing wing-cannon controls. Weird when you thought about it because the manual rigs on an x-wing were hair-trigger, so it didn’t take any great physical strength to engage them.You felt it afterwards though, taking your helmet off or during the post-mission review._

_Lt. Joma had made the same reflexive movement sometimes, when suiting up or while looking at the young pilots lined up on the airstrip to board or jockeyingfor good seats next to the air-chillers in the classroom._

_As if you were loosening up an injury, shaking off the pain in order to be ready to take the next shot._  

_Oh. Don't ever be a spy, Dameron. Don't even play Sabbac for stakes._

 

 

Ematt looked down too and BB-8 made that sad little descending note he made when he was miserable.

D'Acy was the only one who met her eye and spoke, quietly. 

 

“Leia Organa passed from us four months ago.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive me please. All I could think to do was to recreate the shock felt on learning that a hero, an icon, someone a survivor ...even knowing they fought a battle constantly all the time forever ....was gone.  
> What? No. It can’t be. 
> 
>  
> 
> But to paraphrase a couple of guys when the strong fall sometimes they become more powerful than you can possibly imagine and nobody is ever really gone. That’s the strength of a story. The Princess is gone but....in my little story..... the Princess will be back.
> 
> In the meantime, Kayly is, unavoidably, a little hyper vigilante as her mission wears on her.


	35. Wanderer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia Organa considers her next mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is how we're choosing to deal with this.

 

 

 

 

 

_What if I lose my way?_

 

 

 

 

 

You came into that dark room full of rust, blowing salt and ashes.

 

I thought I saw you because it was the end.

 _“In together and out together Luke?”_ I thought, _“Is this one of those weird twin things?”_

 

If I’d been able to think clearly I would have said “Aren’t you a little short for a Jedi Master?”

Still sorry I missed that one.

 

But I didn’t have the strength. I spent it all on the hair joke.

_Lame, but you went with it._

_Damn.I love you Luke._

 

It felt as if I were crying but I wasn’t. When was the last time I cried? How long ago?

 

 

 

 

But they were all looking at you, these old friends and beautiful brave children, the last of the last, the ones my failure had brought to die in this terrible place and I realized then that I wasn’t the only one who could see you.

 

You were there so solid and real but none of them could see what I saw, how you were held together by threads….Duty and Sorrow, Loyalty and Love….. but you were already Light.

 

_Just a farm boy my ass! I read all that old Jedi mythology in school. There was never anything in it like this._

_You must have been one of the best…the very best._

 

 

You came to show me that anything was possible.

You came to tell me that the thing I wanted most to save was lost forever.

 

 

You told me my son is dead in every way that will ever matter.

You told me no one is ever really gone.

 

_Jedi and their bloody paradoxes._

 

 

 

 

 

You kissed my forehead as if I were the little sister

… _did we ever figure out which of us was born first? I forgot to ask the old woman before she died. Do you chat with Kenobi out there in the Light? Ask the lying bastard sometime, he must know_ …..

 

Then you left me….laid that lucky charm that wasn't there in my hand and went away….outside…. to him….to the burning hole that still holds the outline of my beautiful boy.

 

I heard poor Poe saying “There has to be a way out, how did Skywalker get in here?” and I almost laughed out loud.

They thought you were really there.

 

 

 

 

Even 3P-o saw you… _.the poor thing is never going to be quite right now you know that_ …he kept walking up to me for weeks after and asking “Mistress Leia? Mistress Leia?…what? Master Luke…?….” and then not being able to finish the question.

R2 said he had to talk him out of trying to get someone to give him a memory wipe just to get rid of the confusion.

 

_“What did you tell him?” I asked_

_***That it doesn’t work. That he will have to suck it up/deal with the ambiguity/endure***_

 

Well, don’t we all?

 

 

 

So many things I will tell you when I find you again.

 

First, most important, that you were wrong, oh my dear.

I never blamed you. Han never blamed you.

 

I blamed Snope, the War, the Empire, the Remnant, Mon’s mistakes and a thousand other things. I blamed Carise and Casterfo, mostly I blamed myself.

 

_I don’t know who Han blamed….only that he let go of blame long before I did….we fought, oh Force we said terrible things to each other but that was before he left the last time…._

 

 

All these old Jedi texts say “Anger” and “Fear” are the seeds of the Dark Side and will destroy even the righteous…. _as someone who spent their life studying the tactics of Saw Gerrera I can only bow my head and agree_ ……but it seems to me now that the downfall of our family for three, maybe four generations has been Secrets.

 

Secrets and Shame in an endless cycle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Somewhere on Tatooine a slave woman lied in order to be able to survive the cruelty of her life….told her child that he was magical, that the “Force” had fathered him and not some brutal trader…. made him believe that he was special and could find the power to change the universe to make it better. “Safe” forever. She must have been an astonishing woman because she convinced not only herself and her little boy of this redemptive delusion but a couple of Jedi Masters as well.

 

_A traumatized child’s conception of “safe”…….power rather than powerlessness, overwhelming strength, superior knowledge, impenetrable armor, control. All of it so that nothing you loved could ever be lost or taken from you again._

 

_Then the pain, the burning rage of a child when loss comes anyway. The parent who dies. The friend who turns away. The lover who says “I am leaving you.”_

_Better to destroy it yourself than let that happen._

 

I found our mother’s un-redacted autopsy reports Luke, many years later in a sealed archive on Naboo and I never showed them to you. Padme Amidala didn’t die in labor or of a broken heart. _People don’t die of broken hearts, believe me, I ought to know._ He killed her. Her larynx was cracked and her windpipe scorched internally so that it slowly inflamed for hours after the initial assault. A tank might have saved her but they didn’t have one on the rescue ship and full metabolic suspension for transport to one would have endangered one or both of us. Her star-crossed lover, her secret husband was lost forever so out of love and shame she chose her babies lives over her own.

Kenobi in grief and shame built new secrets on the old one. My parents, your aunt and uncle…..and walls grew higher….all meant to protect us.

 

 

But that protection was a lie and when the secrets crumbled we saw the cost that others paid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I slipped into the garment storage locker in the Hall of the Senate on Courescant to report to my “handler” one last time before I boarded my shuttle and returned to Aldaraan. I was flush with nervous pride, the internship ruse finished, my first “mission” successfully done.

Cassian Andor had been sitting on a trunk rolling down his sleeve. “What are you doing?” I asked.

 _If he thought “What do you think I’m doing Princess?” he concealed it so beautifully._

“Tri-so-3 injection, for my next assignment,” he said dropping the pen-sized hypo-spray into the incinerator tube and I nodded as if I even knew what the fuck he was talking about.

Of course once I was safely back on Aldaraan, on a closed-access terminal I looked it up.

[… _if likely to be captured and tortured in a way that denied access to a “lullaby” /suicide solution…Ts3, is a pain-triggered nano-implant that can be injectedin advance….Untraceable by scan…. Hormonal response to enhanced pain will trigger release of an oxygen bubble into the blood causing a massive stroke. Implants must be removed within seven days or_ …..]

 

Stupid girl that I was I pretended it didn’t terrify me.

 _This is war._ I told myself. _The freedom of the very Galaxy itself is at stake. All of us know the sacrifices that may be asked of us._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Vader boarded the Tantive I heard the sound of Captain Antilles neck breaking just out of sight as they marched me down the corridors past the bodies of my guard.

_His son would fire the shot that set that monster’s funeral pyre burning. Balance of a kind._

 

When he brought the T0-D into my cell I thought of a young man who had once risked his own life to keep me safe burning on Scarif and a thin and fragile hope that I had put into an escape pod and tossed into space like a message on a paper boat. I prayed to die before I broke.

_But Cassian Andor didn’t die that day and I didn’t either._

 

Did my father know who I was while I was screaming?

 

Did he know when he forced me to watch Tarkin wave a hand and destroy three billion souls I was sworn to protect….everything and everyone I loved?

 

He murdered his own brother.

 

 

He knew by the time he ordered them to crank the audio volume in my cell on Bespin and made me listen while they tortured Han.

Because that was to hurt you, wasn’t it?

 

Did he cut your hand off to try make you like him?

Stupid monster.

You were never like him. Even that judgmental faraway Lighthouse that spoke to me with my mother’s voice knew that.

_“..he didn’t seem to be touched by it at all…”_

 

 

 

It wasn’t about forgiveness you told me. It was about believing in balance, denying Darkness a total win.

The radical transformative act of looking for light in the darkest place.

 

I saw your face on Endor. I felt what it meant to you to believe that you had redeemed him. That some spark of Anakin Skywalker remained, was re-lit when he killed Palpatine to save you….and I loved you so much and I wanted to believe too.

 

 

 

I never told you what was in my heart.

I never told you so many things.

That the nightmares about Vader never stopped.

 

 

 

 

 

_The bedtime rituals got more and more elaborate, until even the father who was apparently born to play kiddie-sabbacc with little colored tiles and make up free-form hours-long stories about pirate wookie princesses with long braided fur and laser swords who stole all the treasure from the vaults of criminals who were cheating at the speeder racing track, started worrying._

_One night as the mother came in late she slipped upstairs to the little boy’s room first straight from the shuttle pad, expecting to kiss her sleeping child. Instead she found every light on and her four year old not only awake but up and sitting on top of the dresser. The boy’s father lay on his stomach on the floor with only his legs sticking out from under the bed._

_“I’ve got a clear visual…how about if I lay down a round, just to be sure, eh kiddo?”_

_“Sure!” the child was saying, excitedly._

_“What the…what is going on?!” she cried._

_“Hi Momma! Poppa is looking,” the child said with a smile, holding out his arms to her._

_“Looking for what?”_

_The father crawled out, dust-covered, with a flashlight in one hand and a blaster in the other._

_“Han! What the HELL?”_

_Her son put a finger to her lips. “No swears Momma,” he said, his new rule, “he’s looking for the voices under my bed.”_

_Later the father defended himself, explained that when he was a little boy in the factory worker tenements his grandfather used to pretend to “shoot” the deck-rats that he was always afraid were under his bunk “There almost never were any,” he protested, “but it made me feel better.”_

_“Besides,” he said in the dark next to her, “He just seemed so dammed sure there was something there.”_

_The bedtime madness lasted for most of that summer. He took to sleeping on the floor beside their bed, getting in somehow despite the locked doors. They’d find him in the morning with the nanny-droid EndeeBee standing outside in the hallway perplexed._

_Then one day when he was five it all just seemed to stop. He still loved “Poppa’s” stories but was content now with two or three. He put himself to bed and stayed there without a fuss._

_Finally home during the Senate break the child’s mother reveled in getting to put him to bed herself, to take up her own stories about a little boy who lived in a library and learned how to slip inside story-vids and books and cause mischief by changing the endings._

_Not as many explosion sound effects as Poppa’s stories but popular._

_He turned off his own light after three kisses and a “Goodnight Momma.”_

_“Such a big boy,” she said, rubbing his back, almost sorry the story was over, she so seldom got to be with him like this._

_“It’s nicer now that the voices are gone,” he said._

_“Yes sweetie,” she murmered, kissing his cheek, “I’m glad that’s better now.”_

_“They told me they understand that I need my rest to grow big and strong, “ he said sleepily, “they say they will wait and come back later when I’m older.”_

 

 _When did the voice come back? Why did the boy listen?_

 

My son knew the difference between Truth and Lies and he chose to believe the Lie.

He chose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will Han be there?

 _“It’s just us now,” Chewbacca said and cried even though I couldn’t_ _....Rey will take care of him......_ _“But he can rest. I know how he tortured himself thinking he could have done more. He died knowing he could not. His soul was clean.”_

 

Han would like the Wookie afterlife….maybe I could find him there?

 

_"I will kill that thing," he said, "I told it I would, and I will. You need to know that."_

_I know, Chewie._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Her name was Shmi, our grandmother. Maybe I will find her. Maybe we can talk to each other or maybe we can just hold onto each other and cry if there are still tears here._

 

_I’m pretty sure there are._

 

 

The books that Rey brought, all just seemed like Narian haiku to me …..I always hated Narian haiku.

 

_Find a way for The Force is inside of You waiting to be Found._

 

Ok. Would it kill you to be just a tiny fucking bit more transparent on the practicalities you mystical old coots?

 

 

 

Luke, I can do this. I know that now. I did it when I was little in that beautiful garden that is dust, and on Bespin when you called me.

 

And then I moved to the big leagues when my son came to kill me.

 

I wasn’t afraid.

_Except for that snap of cold, it was actually majestically beautiful. Force knows I could have used the rest._

 

But I could hear them calling out in fear and panic. _Not Gail and Reese and Sanura. They were past me. Gone._

But the children…..Poe, Kaydel, Finn,…..I was trying to reach in and get to them, and I did. I found my way.

 

I stepped between one thing and another….one place and another. I reached for a door and I….reached…..inside the eggshell of that broken ship because I could not let go. Could not let them go. Not then, not like that.

 

 

 

_Oh Han, I wish you could have seen it._

_Babe, you would have said, that was fucking awesome._

 

 

 

 

Now it seems I must step out.

 

I always hated being a symbol, a figurehead.

At long last I can lay it down, that debt at least is paid.

 

 

 

I’m not quitting. I hope they all know that. Rey will tell them.

 

It’s just that I’ve pushed a weary little soldier’s body as far as I can alone and this is the only way to be strong enough.

 

_“The Jedi were chosen in toddlerhood and studied for a lifetime,” you told me, nervous, when Han jokingly called you “Master Skywalker” the first time, “I got a two week crash course and spent some quality time arguing with dead people.”_

 

_Rey got four days and a mail order course but she seems confident._

 

How hard can it be?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_I half-hoped you’d be standing right here waiting for me but that would be too easy. You went on ahead of course._

 

 

 

All I could think was how beautiful they all were, the people in the room….and how sorry I was that this was the only way forward I could find…. _not sorry for me, oh fuck no the relief was staggering_ … sorry for them.

D’Acy wiping the tears from her cheeks with her hands so methodically because even grief becomes familiar in time…. _oh Larma, so much weight will fall on you now._ Like a splinter of kyber someone once showed me, delicate and bright and almost unbreakable.

Kaydel so terribly young, so strong.

Poe standing, stricken… _but ready…terrified but not as he would have been….able to bear now what would have broken him six months ago_.

I see her there…..his mother… _..Shara, have you been here all the time?…._ but she doesn’t look at me she looks at him, shining, as if he were made of paper and she were a light behind him. _He has your heart Shara, there’s a generosity in him, a natural optimism that’s rare, and draws people to him. But he has your head too when he uses it, quick-thinking, resilient.I never knew Kes well but Han liked him, “…. if you’ve gotta kick through a door take Dameron with you, the big guy gets shit done.”_

 

_I couldn’t go to your memorial service but Wedge showed me a small holo._

_A big man with shoulders bowed, broken, that edgy mohawk all grown out now and a small boy beside him, holding his hand._

 

_Shara, my friend, forgive me._

My son was lost and I used yours, there is no other way to put it.  

 

 

 

And Cassian Andor didn’t burn. Galen Erso’s daughter pulled him out of the fire and they walked away and built an alliance out in the wilderness somewhere

He kept watch. She tried to warn us. Once again nobody listened until it was too late.

Their fiery daughter stood in a room and said as much to my face.

 

_I sent her to make contact with Draven and when I tried to explain in the most T-for-teen compliant way who that old shadow was she cut me off._

_“I know exactly who he is, ma’am.”_

I realized then that Andor told his daughter as much of the truth as he could.

He was a better spy than I was and must have known in his bones that secrets are a poison that can linger even through generations.

“ _Implants must be removed within seven days or_ …..”

 

 

_Forgive me, Captain, you tried to teach me but we were always in different parts of the same story...or so I thought._

_Maybe I'll see you too._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rey is the only one who turns her head.... _Luke! that child is like daylight._....not as if she is looking at me but as if she can hear footsteps. I think if I spoke to her she would hear me but I don’t want to bother her.

 

 

You’re probably going to be talking her ear off anyway. The poor kid has enough on her plate right now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fear left a long time ago. 

Anger.... _depending on your definition, because there's still some ass I'd like to kick_....is mostly ashes.

 

 

 

All the secrets are finally done.  

Shame is going to be a little harder to offload but I'm working hard here.

 

 

 

 

 

_Here is a doorway, just where you always said there was……oh…. there are so many of them……sneaky._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can’t follow the path you took Luke. I never could. You accepted that finally. I could see it in your eyes.

I’ll find my own way, I promise.

I’ll catch up with you.

 

 

 

_It’s a twin thing, right?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beginners guide to being a Force ghost.  
> As I imagine she did with most rule books she speed-reads and then tosses it to go her own way.
> 
>  
> 
> Next we return to our regularly scheduled narrative in which Kaylyra Andor meets some of the rest of the New Rebellion in person and discusses how this whole "friends-with-benefits" thing may work itself out in wartime.


	36. Parameters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaylyra Andor, now acting Rebel Intelligence, is debriefed by what remains of Resistance Command. Lies, secrets, ranks and strategies have all been undone. Her father's daughter, Kayly considers what she is hearing and not hearing, looking back at Leia Organa's plans-within-plans. Most of which have unravelled.  
> She considers her relationship with Poe Dameron as well as how each of them have changed and will need to in the war ahead.  
> Once again they have to set a timer.  
> Caluan Ematt discovers that his shuttle is being used for non-military purposes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretty sure Leia Organa had a reason for everything she ever did....except maybe Han Solo.
> 
> “Do you want to walk out to my mom/dad/uncle’s boat?”  
> A valid euphemism for 'Want to have sex?" on the shore.

 

 

 

 

This “docking bay” was never built to be anything like one. It must have been a power conduit back in the day, part of a network used to charge big tachyon battery towers topside. Had the project been an abandoned boondoggle? Did planetary authorities just abandon it after the Clone Wars when Tabana prices dropped? No knowing, but the company that built it was generations gone to bankruptcy, it’s off-world workers had long decamped and most importantly it didn’t appear on any available maps. 

 _Flying in and out of such narrow criss-crossed tunnels without scratching any of the shielded surfaces must be a trip. Never going to admit it to Dameron but she was damn glad she hadn't had to fly herself in here._  

"It entirely blocks out that fuck-all FTL tracking?" 

"So we’ve calculated," he said, "and the old sister reassured me it was true"

He had taken to calling Portia that for some reason. 

Leveraging the metal cane she hardly needed anymore, Kayly managed to sit on the tiled floor and dangle her legs, still wrapped in pale blue kinesthetic tape, over the edge of the ramp. 

“However you found it, this place is genius."Kayly ran a hand across the faintly reflective surface of the nearest wall. “Ematt must be quite the resourceful guy.” 

“Oh, he’s definitely got skills," Dameron agreed sitting himself down beside her. "They built an army out of nothing forty years ago. As my old flight instructor used to say, “Learn things the hard way and you’ll never forget...unless the ship explodes.”

“Cute.” 

She looked up then and had to laugh at what she saw in the grey mirror.

BB-8 was rolling back and forth on the platform behind them.

He would roll back, then rotate, take off speeding then stop himself just millimeters from the reflective walls. 

*...meeeee.....refracted multiples of image!!....*

*....me..me....meeeee...*

Oh Ea. He was playing “chicken” with himself.

_Did droids get bored?_

Dameron called over his shoulder, "Buddy, buddy..... be careful there!” then laughed. "Poor little bastard. He misses flying, I think. Who knew cabin fever was a B-series programming bug?” 

_Not the only one is he?_

“Anyway, It’s invaluable as a safe bolt hole for the present " he continued, "but we have to stay sharp and the risk, however careful we are, is going to increase slightly every time we fly in and out. If we get cornered here....” 

"Hoth," she said. _Or worse than Hoth, because now we are so few._  

“That's why key personnel can't be in the same place at the same time. Rey and Chewbacca are in the caves off Mistrall. C'ai and Connix are on Base Two. Ematt’s pulling out later today and I need to go very soon....you and I both do. We need to keep everybody in motion.”

“So.....it's Haven?” she said. 

 _This was Portia’s “Lessons” in the tower:Tactical Strategies of the Galactic Civil War. She could almost hear Mama interjecting snarky comments from up on the fourth level._  

“Right. I keep forgetting. You probably got better history lessons than the rest of us “victory kids.”

 

 

 

_On the long jumps between La'hmu and Ea, Kes Dameron had sat in the co-pilots seat talked about his son for pretty much five solid hours. “I didn’t...We didn’t....tell him much about the war when he was little," Mr. Dameron had said, "Nothing specific anyway.....When we first came for him, to her parents on Takodana, he held onto his grandmother, terrified. “He doesn’t know us except as holos and neither of us look like those pictures anymore,” she said. Oh, Fuerza how she cried….He’s only two, I told her, we have the rest of our lives. Shara was so insistent how she didn't want any of it to touch him. Then after she was gone.....I just couldn’t…..and he is so much like her, you have to believe me. Every time I looked at him it was like she was still in the room….I wanted him to remember his mom as his mom not just some name on a monument. He learned the basics in primary school like every kid .....and it wasn't as if he didn't know that we’d served. I mean, practically everybody on Yavin in those days had been in theatre somewhere.......and then he went to Hosnian Prime. All he ever wanted to do was fly…all he cared about. It meant so much to him when he got into Flight Academy....he was just nineteen.Shara’s name was on all the battle walls and people...people started just talking to him, pilots who’d served with her. When he came home on his first leave, that night I came in and he was just sitting at the table with two beers already poured and he said “Pop. What did you do in the war? What did Mom do?”_

 

 

 

“Maybe.....I don’t know." Kayly said. "I suppose most people don’t get their history lessons annotated by Portia.”

 

“Ouch.” Dameron grimaced, “I'm trying to picture that. It must have been..thorough.”

 

“Very" she conceded. "On the bright side she would always answer any direct question. It's just that once in a while her answers could be......well, let's just say she definitely has firm opinions. Papa calls her out on it sometimes.”

"Firm opinions on what?"

"Among many other things, spaceship design." 

That made him laugh a real laugh and the sound echoed off the tiled walls. BB-8 came rolling over, as if to find out what was so funny and bumped Poe on the back, almost affectionately. Poe reached back as he often did and patted the little droid's scuffed white casing.

 

_She thought of K2, who she'd never met. When she and Galen had asked Portia to she'd shown them pictures of K2 Security series units. They were tall, usually cased in black or dark grey, engineered on a Hox-anthro-body model...which Portia grudgingly acceded made some sense because they were usually required to work directly in human adapted spaces and with human-adapted equipment....imposing, spiky._

_It was hard to imagine anyone ever hugging one._

_She remembered hearing her father call for him in the night._

_How did a broken droid, minutes or hours past final sequence failure access a security-locked shuttle, send it to find two injured people on a flaming battlefield and then auto-pilot in FTL all the way to the Modell System? Everything Kayly had learned about droids and spacecraft interface told her it was impossible._

_"Sometimes when conditions arise under extraordinary circumstances parameters can expand in unpredictable ways," Portia said._

_"What kind of conditions?" Galen, always the questioner, had asked._

_"Theoretically there are several, but in my personal experience?" she said, "it is generally Love."_

 

 

 

 

 

 

"If I didn't say it before, I know I owe you big time, BB-8," she said, "if you hadn't been there I'd have died. I fucked up."

_And oh, am I going to get such a lecture when I get out of these shiny tunnels._

 

*....we are soldiers together. you're welcome. I moved debris and performed secondary level emergency medical support....*

 

"You didgreat pal..." Poe smiled.

 

*.....I did not have to commandeer any spacecraft, assault equipment or fire any laser weapons this time....*

_What?_

"Allright, allright. That's enough, just take the compliment you little murder-bot, don't get cocky."

BB-8 rolled back and forth happily.

 

Kayly wiggled her toes and kicked her feet, the way Mellie had said she was supposed to keep circulation going.

It was almost like old times, except for the bandages and the mirrored walls, and all the people who weren't there.

They sat together in silence for awhile.

 

It couldn't last, she knew. He had brought her here for a reason.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last night she had her first "de-brief" with the three of them,Poe, D'Acy and Ematt, all of them in a little room off the "med bay" that had once probably been the power plant workers control room.

She gave them all the data as she could without access to Portia, outlined all her ongoing operations, then she waited as they went through it.

They were impressed, which was gratifying she supposed but mostly she felt…shifted somehow… as if the weight on her shoulders was just a little less, or maybe it had just been redistributed.

When she was able to ask her own questions she went straight “to the Taun in the kitchen”, _as Old Markey always liked to say._

"We're not letting out the word that Leia's gone." D'Acy had told her. "We're not lying....that is, not falsifying appearances or broadcasts....the Princess doesn't need to be visible to be a rallying symbol. Later, we know we will have to come up with a narrative but we're not there yet.”

 

Kayly noticed immediately that none of them ever said “died.” It was always “lost” or “gone” when they talked about the General.

_Was it a habit of concealment, post-traumatic deflection or some strange Jedi formality?_

“Leia knew that she wasn't going to...her term was "Stay opaque forever"...she used to joke about it," the older woman said, with a ghost of a smile. "even before the move to D'Qar."

Poe had been leaning forward on the table, looking down at his hands with fingers laced, as D’Acy spoke. He straightened and leaned back in his chair when Kayly asked the question she knew Portia was going to ask as soon as she talked her.

What had Leia Organa’s plan been for carrying on without her?

_She was too bloody clear-eyed not to have made one. Most likely she had made several. Before Crait? After?_

 

Dameron answered.

“She kept looking for Skywalker, even more intensely after you left," he said. "It was important to her. Not for personal reasons she always insisted, but because she felt he was essential as a symbol. She had been publicly discredited and the rest of Command, even heroes like Ackbar and Sakura where considered outliers, reactionaries who had always been unhappy with the Concordance. It didn't matter how much evidence she presented the Accommodationists and Neo-Separatists could both dismiss it all unless she produced her sources and allowed them to be questioned.”

 _And Lighthouse would have been revealed. Her parents, Portia….Ea’s location all exposed….. Bless you, General you kept your word._

“But if Commander Luke Skywalker had walked onto the floor of the Senate, if the last Jedi, the hero of Yavin and Endor returned from exile to expose what the First Order was building, who could stand against that? The New Republic would have to take action or risk half the Fleet deserting on the spot to join the Resistance.”

 _The way you did Poe?_

“I know now that she had Portia looking for clues, trying to find him or get a message to him before the First Order did. When I was captured,” _He swallowed, it was subtle. She stopped an impulse to reach for his hand_ , “I was on a mission to try make contact with an old explorer/archeologist who supposedly knew Skywalker's last location. I know now that she received his location from Lighthouse."

The Princess had half-lied. Strategy or not she was looking for her brother…. _You know it and I know it. Portia, who has looked fruitlessly for her brothers for these many thousand years, knew it…._ but she needed to use him too, just as she needed it to be to be you who brought him in. A decorated Republic officer who'd seen the First Order's atrocities first hand. Smart, brave, charismatic....a good man. A child of heroes.

 

_What was it Portia had said? "She thought he would come for her first.”_

If... _.when?._...her son killed her Skywalker would have been there, not only safe with the Resistance but cleansed by her death of the stain of their genetic father’s crimes and an even more dramatic symbol.

A young hero and an old one would pull in both the veterans and the younger generation to the fight while there was still time.

_Oh, Dameron. Leia Organa loved you like a son but she was going to make you a weapon despite that. Maybe even because of it. She knew your worth._

 

 

_Oh how I wish you could have come to Ea, General._

_Then-eldest Perrin and you would have kicked some ass together._

 

 

Would it have worked? No one would ever know.

Poe only survived because a First Order Stormtrooper deserted and helped him, his friend Finn.

The Starkiller was completed before they could stop it and now there was no Senate to win over, no Fleet left to be joined to the Resistance and deployed. 

 

Desperate, Organa sent the last apprentice instead. Skywalker finally came but fell saving the survivors of the Resistance.... _also sketchy on details Portia was eager for but that could wait_. Now Leia was gone and even if no one was publicly announcing it all they had to work with here were myths.

 

 

Kayly saw how D'Acy's glance flickered to Poe as he spoke, but Dameron never looked away. His dark eyes met hers wide and his voice and hands stayed steady after that one catch.

 

_He knows what the General was doing. He's forgiven her._

 

This is our war now.

We make the protocols.

 

 

 

 

 

_She was half-scared, half-curious to meet this Jedi girl._

_Finn was someoneKayly wanted to talk to face to face as well. The information that Ardee and that dick Len had given Papa was something she definitely wanted run past someone who knew the insides of an FO Star Destroyer.....also, maybe he'd want to know about Ardee and poor Deeb, even Dex and his folks._

_They damn sure wanted to know about him._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poe,” she said, finally, because it couldn't last. “Why did you bring me down here?" 

He slipped his hand under hers on the cold tile, lifted it slightly.

The silence went on, as if he didn’t know anymore what he wanted to ask.

 

 

"Kayly," Poe said quietly, "How much does Portia know about Kylo Ren?”

 _Oh. That._  

"If you mean his current location....she isn't able to..." 

"No." his eyes were still down, looking at their still hands, "That's not at all what I mean."

 

_Do we know that the “Supreme Leader” is Ben Solo?_

_Yeah. We know that._

 

No one had mentioned it in the debrief, so she hadn’t either….yet.

 

_He knew now. Either Leia told him, or Skywalker or somebody else and it's eating at him. Of fucking course it is. I know that much about you Poe Dameron, that you would give anything you had to keep your father safe, to spend even five more minutes with your mother.  He hurt you and he knew exactly who he was hurting when he did it._

_How could it not be personal with you and that monster?_

_I’m Rebel Intelligence and you’re Command. If you want to talk about him with me, here and now, out loud, just give the order._

 

“We know fair bit about the sadistic murdering bastard," she said evenly, "but if you're ordering me to give you a confidential report, Commander, you need to say so directly.”

 

 

_How will it be with us Poe?_

_Do we build a box and try to keep something safe inside it for as long as we can or do we give that up right now to spare ourselves the pain of seeing it broken or having to leave it behind?_

She was surprised by the sadness she felt, almost as if she were laying a stone in Mama's garden.

 

Without quite meaning to she found she was pressing his two outside fingers with hers.

_Wish That a Truth Was Otherwise._

He probably didn't know but he understood.

"No," he said after a long pause, shaking his head and turning to face her again. “You’re right. Screw him. I don't want to do that. We’ll meet again before Ematt leaves and D’Acy has a plan for the whole team...,”he tapped his ear. _Universal symbol for "Portia"_ she supposed _._ “....to conference later. We’ll get you out and back in field”

His hand was still over hers but the temperature in the wide shiny room had changed, or rather changed back.

 

“Andor, you may have noticed there's not a lot of breathable space around here and that it gets pretty crowded sometimes. Room for private conversations can be hard to find."

"I can think of a dozen good things to do privately that aren’t conversation, though most would be more comfortable not on a glass tiled floor".

 

“Yeah, I didn’t think this through very well did I?…Wait a dozen? Sweetheart you have GOT to take me to one of these Fish Market dances.”

 

“Fair, Dameron, it’s a Fish Fair, also I have two wobbly legs right now which eliminates six options.”

She looked around. _There was not a forgiving surface in here._

“Can we at least get a blanket?” she asked. “As I remember…and you should know that I review that memory fairly regularly….you are a clever and inventive guy with a blanket.”

_Not lying._

 

He coughed and… _fucking Force actually blushed a little._

Damn he was fun to flirt with.

 

 

 

Poe turned to look back over his shoulder.

 

"Hey BB-8. Can you check where Caluan Ematt is right now?”

The little astromech rolled back from his games with his own reflection.

*…General Ematt is eating food in the L-1 meeting room…and getting reports from friend Rachel and friend Connix…*

“Good…and what’s the status of his shuttle?”

*….the 500-X is in the topside access tube and being fueled by PT-T3 for departure at or after 13:00…”

_It was too much like her last summer at HarborTown before the Fire. When the phrase, “Do you want to walk out to my mom’s boat?” became part of she, Mary and Sanna’s lexicon._

 

She was laughing as hard as she had laughed that eighteenth summer.

BB-8 turned his head assembly around and opened his photo receptor wider as if curious.

_Droids probably thought they were even crazier than Mems did._

 

“Go find D'Acy and ask if Sheridan's reports from Roche have come in. Then go see if 3-P0 is feeling up to going through translating the Verpine transmissions. I'll meet you up there in an hour..” he looked at her. “…Make that two hours..ok?”

_Oh bless you, Dameron. I would do you right here on this tile floor if my shoulder wasn't black and blue, I swear._

 

“I'll give it my best shot,” she said, “but I’ve had a rough week. I think 1.45 hours may be the outside of what I can manage.”

The little astromech whirled around and out, whistling busily. 

“Culero,” he said and kissed her.

_Summer in more ways than memory._

 

"How far away is this shuttle?” she said when she could.

He pulled away, a little, as far as her hands in his shirt would let him.

“Up the…that way…” he moved his head a little.. “five…ten minute walk.”

 _Too long._ _She might have actually whimpered…embarassing….she did not care_

“…maybe less…can I carry you?”

You already did. She would have said but found she was a little past joking now.

“Yes please.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_________________

 

 

 

 

Caluan Ematt came down to check his shuttle.

 

Nunb didn’t trust him to fly in and out of this little marble-maze in a 500-X even with the wing-tips shielded and was insisting on remote-co-piloting him from the control room. He wanted to check the nav one more time before the last meeting.

If Ematt so much as whispered a wing against a side on the way out he was never going to here the end of “I told you so’s” from the old nanny.

 

It was pulled up against the side of the “canal” looking like salvage, which was what it was.Indistinguishable from the tens of thousands of others that came and went moving copal and other small cargo in and out of Ogem and the rest of the Jurex system.

_Hide in plain sight. Crix Mandine had taught him years ago. The eyeholes of a helmet cut off a lot more vision than you’d think._

 

PT-T3 was just sitting humming by the wall across from the little ship.

**….good morning General Ematt….**

“The same Pattee. Got the box all fueled up?”

**….yes….fully refueled at ….”

“Grand then,” he said, laying a hand on the frame, ducking his tall head by reflex. Fortunately he stopped himself before he banged his nob. The hatch was closed and the view screen shields were up on the inside.

**….I am afraid Commander Dameron is using the shuttle at present General Ematt….as per his on-the-spot authorization….although I know we don’t record that anymore…..**

“Using it for bloody what?”

**….he did not say….he indicated he would be finished by 09:00…there is possible conference in progress…**

"Conference?"

**….unconfirmed….but he was accompanied by an officer recently arrived but granted authorization…..although I know we aren’t using those anymore….as Andor, Kaylyra,Army of the Resistance, Corporal…**

The old soldier stood silent for a moment then threw back his head and laughed.

“Fine,” he said when he finally recovered himself, “Bloody youth. I’m going back for another cup of caff then. A favor Pattee?”

**…of course…**

“After young Dameron is done with the shuttle I want the whole thing re-cleaned, is that understood?”

**….affirmative….**


	37. The Road to Town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia Organa continues to find her path forward without a map, recalling her brothers stories of those who help us find our way.

 

>  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The amount of walking surprised her, although probably it shouldn't have.  
Climbing up a bone-dry stream bed she followed it like a path in the light of an early sunrise.

 

  
Luke told her a story once about the speeder he'd had.

"I'm going to need to sketch this out first," he said. "You know we lived in the middle of nowhere even by Tatooine standards. So if I wanted to see anyone who hasn't my immediate family, a Jawa or an industrial-level binary-speaking droid I had to travel 425.5 k...."  
_"So dramatic kid," Han had rolled his eyes, "you should at least round it off."  
"I AM rounding it off," Luke said, "you want it in centimeters? Because trust me, I counted it out that way."_

He talked about how teenagers from the far-flung moisture and power farms used to move heaven and dirt just to get to a place called "Toshee" station,... _or maybe it was "Toshie's Station,"_...one of those trade outpost/garage/comm-relay post/grocery and liquor stores, that are basically the center of the universe on sparsely populated Rim worlds.

Most families took any excuse to go into "town" as they called it but not Luke's uncle.... _.our uncle_...he never went in until he absolutely had to and then left as quickly as possible. This was rough when Luke was little but agonizing as he reached adolescence.  
The excuse was always that it took too long, or that they couldn't spare any of the equipment. They had a "Turbo lift" S4 tug, a T-16 hopper, plus a,broken T-15 on blocks and stripped for parts, a short-haul cargo speeder and a few stand-up tow rigs. By the time Luke was thirteen he could fly or drive every piece of equipment on their prosperous-in-most-seasons-but-not-so-much-more-so-than-their-neighbors-as-to-be-worthy-of-comment farm even if he had to jump-start it. In fact his uncle had always made absolutely sure that he could, drilling him on anything new as soon as they got it "in case of emergency."

_Of course you did Uncle Owen._

_How much did you know?_  
_Enough, eventually._  
_I've never been able to work out_ the _math but you couldn't have been more than teenagers yourselves you and Aunt when Kenobi tracked you down. Seventeen? Eighteen? To take on a newborn, dear Force, that's courage._  
_Your own youth must have been brutally chaotic way out there on the Outer Rim in the last days of the Clone Wars..... your father a homesteader, the only mother you ever knew a slave woman he emancipated by the trade of his own labor. Did she ever whisper stories to you of your stepbrother, the odd but loving little boy she had sent away with the mysterious Jedi to find his destiny as the great righter of wrongs?_

  
_The Jedi who had bought the engine parts they needed to escape and the talented little slave boy because he fit their magic algorithm but left his mother behind in chains. I'm sure that occurred to you._

_One of Saw Gerrera's famous quotes, "...every successful overthrow of government has at its heart a promise broken to a child."_

It was easier for Luke growing up, not easy but easier. Things were more stable under the Empire-backed Hutt, just as long as you paid your protection money, and kept an eye out for trouble with the Tuskin villages.

He had begged for a speeder of his own, he told her, almost daily from the age of fourteen, done odd jobs and repair work for distant neighbors for credits, scavenged in his spare time for pyrite to trade with the jawas who prized it, for two seasons. Then one day the local Jawa band had dragged up in a carrier and dumped most of the parts a SoroSub X-34 on the flat dirt by their vehicle barn.  
"Hey farmer! Hey! Hey farmer! You been looking for one, eh? eh? eh? 27..as is."

 _Han had interrupted at this part of the story._  
_"X-34? One question, just one question, kid.....lime green or gold-flake pink?"  
And they both howled with laughter. Apparently it was a speeder-boy thing._

He had, like a gullible sap... _his words.._..paid the dealer before his uncle could get home to nix the deal. The fallout was epic when Owen Lars came back in from the flats.

" _You and the old man go at it?"_  
_Han talked very little about his own father and when he did it was with the wistful quality of a former prizefighter recalling a respected opponent.  
"After a fashion, but not how you mean probably. Uncle was master of the silent soul-crushing glare and never used three words when two would do. My skills in those days leaned toward door-slamming, sulking and smart remarks."_

 

 _Rey will spend the rest of her days pondering everything you ever did or said to her for meaning Luke._  
_When she told me about the island she said, "He was kind of mean and snarky at first....I think that was to confuse me, as an obstacle, a test. One of the books called it "the Hero's Journey."_  
_"Hmmmm....Did he slam doors?" I asked her._  
 _Oh, she looked so surprised._  
 _"Several times. How did you know?" she asked._  
 _We turn back into the children we once were when we're in pain don't we?_

 

  
His aunt had mediated and in the end he was permitted to drag his "junk" to the lower level garage that was his semi-personal sanctuary and work on his "damn fool" project when his work was done and "out of my..." meaning his uncle's".."sight."

It would have gone more quickly if he could have gotten some of his friends from the other station to come help him of course but his aunt and uncle were strict about no overnight visitors. Except for an older boy, his friend Biggs, who'd holo'ed in to give advice when he could get a signal, he was on his own, Luke said. He downloaded an out-of-date, pirated copy of the assembly manual... _another snort from Han who considered manufacturers specs to be a sign of moral weakness._...and started to work.  
He kept at it, doggedly until slowly, frustratingly, the thing had started coming together.  
One morning he left two salt-rusted relay couplings laying on the bench and when he returned that night they were sanded clean and attached. Another time he got up early before a harvest run and climbed under the motor panel to find that all too-short pieces of wire that he'd dangerously taped together had been replaced with longer ones....a cracked wind screen he'd laid out in confused fragments was glued together and ready to install, a dented deflector panel left propped against the wall had had the dents hammered out of it. Neither of them ever talked about it. Stubborn men.

Then came the day that it was drivable, finished.....mostly, except for some bodywork, and the rattle on that back airflow baffle because the filter was the wrong size....the irrigation droids helped him pull it out and up the ramp. When they got stuck in the soft sand ....there'd been a dust storm the night before.....halfway up, his uncle had grunted, unfolded his arms and walked down to help them push it out, while his aunt stood at the top shouting encouragement and laughing.

There were endless rules of course. No drinking, no vaping, no racing. He wasn't supposed to take it out without telling one of them, which meant in person in real-time and after verbally expressed permission. He had to say where he was going, when he would be back and if he missed curfew even once, that was it. His aunt packed a first aid kit that would have supplied a field hospital and wedged it under the drivers seat, then primed up the laser rifle and a signal flare set and attached them to the lid of the storage boot.

But, oh,  the first day he took it into Toshie's, ostensibly to pick up some pleatheen hose and a crate of fruit pods, he'd thought he was a Rykkan merchant-prince.

That 425.3 k. seemed like only a few glorious meters now, barely enough time to plan out his confident dismount....getting in and out on the driver's side required jumping over the door because they'd had to weld it shut on that side...when he arrived at the back porch of the station store, where his few pals hung out. Drinking beer or sweet tonics, talking about music, football, pod racing and getting the hell off of Tatooine.

Carefully not talking about whose conscription number might be coming up next.

" _Of course...Like anybody ever uses the door, anyway?" Han shrugged  
"Right?" Luke grinned. "Exactly what I thought."_

 _  
Idiots,_ she'd thought _, But they're my idiots._

" _Whatever happened to that sweet ride?" Han had asked, not because he was being thoughtless or unkind, but because Han was immune to certain kinds of shadows and he wanted to know._

_"Six months later I sold it to a rehab dealer on the street in Mos Eisley for 900 short," Luke said calmly. "I had to pay some price-gouging pilot for a fast ride off-world."  
Han nodded and laid a hand on her brother's arm. _

_He knew the story, most of it anyway by then._

_"Kid," he said, "the old man said you'd pay 3,000."  
"Han," Luke said, "the old man bull-shitted you."_

"Everything is measurement against something else," he'd told her. "250kph,  
425.3 k, 42530000.2 cm, four years six months and fourteen days, 27 credits, nineteen years, twelve parsecs, three people, fifty-five years, all valid and accurate and all describing the vital measurement of quantifiable things, but they are not the sum of anything in and of themselves. The true distance to, from and between things, people and events is very different."

_The book said:  
"The Unifying Force may be perceived as stars and galaxies, as space and time, so that one may move across it as a smooth surface, through as the ripples of a wave, as the steps of a path or as leaves that flutter past in an intermittent wind..."_

Right.

She came up the flat path formed by the bone-dry stream bed and walked up to it, parked in the long sunset shadow of a the massive golden rock that stood like a gate post on that side, ran her fingers over the welded-shut door panel...gold-flake pink.  
A light film of sand covered it.  
Sand covered everything here sooner or later, there was a healing in that, she supposed.

They were sitting a little way off from the speeder, the man on a fallen slab in the shade and the woman beside him, her head on his shoulder. Both of them stood as she approached.

_Late twenties or early thirties perhaps. She was small, round-faced with wide blue eyes, short fair hair and a gentle smile. He had brown hair and broad shoulders, stocky but not heavy. A hard-working man. Not a flincher. ._

"Hello" her uncle said and took her hand between his calloused ones.  
"You missed him, dear," her aunt told her, "He left a while ago, but it's alright, we can show you the way."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The continuing adventures of Force ghost Leia.


	38. Reports

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kayly Andor on the fugitive Resistance medical base at Ogem. She starts the first of her many lists, reports and idiosyncratic analysis of First Order activities. Larma D'Acy wonders about this unusual woman and questions Poe Dameron about her . Two traumatized young people try to make 70 minutes in the back of a too-small shuttle mean something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just bits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Partial list of what she knew before she got here and reported to “Central Command” in the form of D’acy, Ematt and Dameron:

  

 - The First Order, having put all its strength and 80% of its liquid assets into the Starkiller and a "shock and awe" front offensive, is now close to living on credit and playing catch-up.

 Analysis: They threaten blockade and extort with real sparkle and verve but they still suck at holding ground. It makes them intensely dangerous as they still have the firepower to decimate a fleet and level half a planet and will do so without blinking if they are pissed. But successful armed robbery is not a long-term economic and political strategy. Dead people can't give you credits more than once and burning planets/stations/refineries can't supply you. As their reserves dwindle and their supply lines stretch they are vulnerable.

They are not making long-term friends or allies beyond the worlds they already control.

Palpatine ruled by fear but ruling by fear alone is expensive to maintain. The Empire spent a generation or better maintaining hearts minds alligence and contracts while throwing smoke presenting itself as the true heir of the peaceful Old Republic, painting the Jedi as corrupt leeches, and the Rebellion as the inheritors of Separatist violence and chaos, exemplified by Saw Gerrera and his Partisans. These posers were not even trying.

Many worlds, especially on the Mid and Outer Rim see the First Order not as some New Empire, offering stability with an acceptable-if-growing dose of oppression but as new and more vicious bandit warlords with really good tech.

They may give up their wallets under the gun but would knife them in the back the first chance they saw. 

 

\- The Imperial Remnant worlds and sympathizer factions in the Core premised their economic support and the conscripted manpower of their post-war generation on assurance that the “First Order” was going to quickly set up this "New Empire,” and establish political “order” and economic supremacy by stepping directly and decisively into the smoking empty hole left by the utter and complete destruction of the New Republic. 

\- As of now the FO/IR coalition isholding but they were getting faint down-low chatter from within the Core. Many old Imperials might be now realizing that the First Order is not the glorious restoration promised to their fathers by the “Contingency”.  EXTREME CAUTION is advised on pursuing contacts with anything like a Fifth Column....History Check: Ghost Uprising....Leaders on the 12 declared worlds of the Remnant are mostly waiting it out and telling their populations it will all be worth it in the end, Speciesist blah-blah-blah, they will pick up the pieces and take their rightful blah-blah, but their support may be thinning.

 _Portia had found a message in the ether, low-frequency drunken ramblings broadcast to but never received by the estranged ex-wife of a Remnant Destroyer commander assigned to a pre-attack Destroyer who despaired openly and talked of the shock of Snope’s “pop-in” holo conferences peppered with open ridicule of the Contingency and the Remnant’s ideological interests. The message appeared to be a suicide note._  

\- Despite what various news reports may say the FO hasn’t managed to take Coruscant yet. Not even close. All they control is the central Palace complex and a few sectors north of the old Medical District. 75% of the former capitol is a blockaded war zone with an active and well-armed.... _thank you Mandalor!._...Underground movement. We have been coordinating power outages and blackouts with them. They want to talk to you. 

\- The Supreme Leader 1.0 is  dead and Supreme Leader 2.0 was immediately in place. The power vacuum lasted less than 20 minutes. _As I’m sure all of you know._

Implications to consider: When Snoke seized power and took control of the Contingency’s long-plotted revenge machine he took on the trappings of the Emperor, but for all the retro Imperial set pieces, the echoey throne rooms, the routine strangling of staff and officers for failure….or even minor clerical mistakes, he was clearly neither a military leader like Hux Sr. or Sloane, only a powerful opportunist. 

~~Also as Portia likes to say, the embodiment of a parasitic nihilistic death-feeding, pain-and-fear-consuming viral life form.~~

_There was no cult of personality. No children’s book biographies of his youth were being printed to indoctrinate the young. He was just the biggest creepiest gargoyle on the top of the pyramid._

\- He had taken on some of Palpatine’s less-widely known Jedi/Sith spooky trappings, calling his lead hatchet-man his “apprentice,” and keeping a color-coded personal bodyguard and suite of assassins…the so-called Knights of Ren. Unlike Palpatine’s Praetorians however, these were masked and fearsome religious zealots unconnected to the regular military who had arrived with their “master.”

 

_On the upside, they appeared to have all died with him too._

_On the downside, their origins were still unknown and no one had ever seen their faces._

_Gotta talk to your Jedi on this one. She seems to have been the only one who walked out of a room with them alive._

\- Where they or the secretive Snope even came from is still unknown and questions about him should not be left unpursued despite seeming to be rendered less vital by the death of Supreme Leader 1.0.  Answers might provide important clues as to the location of First Order weapons and supply resources and powerful jump facilities.

 ~~Papa~~ Major Andor has theories that they might be connected to an aggressive Unknown Region race called the Chiss and is parsing data even now.

 

ANALYSIS AND NOTES re: Snoke/post-Snoke:

Supreme Leader 2.0 might not have access to the same resources in the UR. Portia had some interesting data on some of his movements back in the UR.

~~There is some wildly unsubstantiated evidence of a potential second front opening up.~~

Snoke himself presented as physically disabled, requiring filtered air and low gravity field supports if required to stand or walk for any length of time. The nature of these disabilities …some appeared to be gravity-related….may hint at a planet of origin.

 - Unlike his predecessor, 2.0 is young, physically healthy, and a verifiably skilled fighter pilot with a keen interest in hands-on-military involvement.  _As I’m sure you are all painfully aware._

 _-_  2.0 is also demonstrably human, which has unfortunately gone a long way toward tamping down resentment in the IR speciesist old guard.

- This may eventually be balanced by the spreading testimonials that he is also a frothing lunatic, prone to fits of uncontrolled rage and despised by most of his fleet command almost as much as is his Fleet Commander… _and fun fact rumored ex-boyfriend_ … the patricidal Hux the younger.

\- Daily executions are continuing unabated among upper level staff. 

_Yet strangely morale is not improving._

\- Save for expensive mercenaries and the few aging Imperials from the “Contingency” that Snoke had not murdered, most of the FO had never seen real combat. This was a war game to them. Most of them do not play well. Some do. 

\- Mon Cala is building a Fleet but they are not yet ready. They cannot move until they ALL move, or risk exposure. They are looking for a way to make secure contact with you.

\- Only Eight members of the New Republic Senate were off-world at the time of the attack, three were assassinated within the first 24 hours of the First Order attack.

The whereabouts of two, Merise Colan of Ord Mandell, and Rala Kre’fey of Bouthwai, are presently unknown and three, Loras Jebel of Uyter, Susan Dorala of Taris and Mikka of Kashyyk are presently safe and in hiding.

In addition four newly-elected Senators who had not yet taken their seats on Hosnian Prime are also in hiding. _One of these, Clarissa Rayma of Chandrilla kicks ass four ways._ They are organizing the outlines of a government in exile and looking for a way to make secure contact with you. 

 

 

 

Partial list of what she knew now that she hadn't known five days ago:

 

\- Leia Organa is gone.

_How stars didn’t fall and worlds didn’t tremble when that happened was a mystery to her but there it was._

_The Princess was gone._

_Oh Bodhi….how would she tell him?_

 

\- It is confirmed that Skywalker’s mysterious apprentice is a girl named Rey.

_The “Resistance “assassin”whispered to have killed Snoke and all of his dreaded bodyguard…go girl!… after infiltrating his ship with an elite team._

_Even more quietly whispered was a rumor that Skywalker himself had been “reborn” just as some FO factions had once circulated fairy tales about the dark hero Vader being “reborn” in the form of the present Supreme Leader Ren._

\- According to Dameron-according-to-Rey, Ren had been the one to actually kill Snoke.

_Interesting._

_If Ren wanted to build up the Jedi/Sith mythology wouldn’t he boast of killing Snoke as an emblem of his own power? It wasn’t as if Snoke had a fan base. These people are reared from the crèche to see raw strength and raw strength alone as the qualification for leadership._

_Why wasn’t that happening? Was he really relinquishing all of that “New Vader” mythology? Had that all been Snoke's propaganda gambit? Was it because_ _the mask got stuffy in hot weather? Maybe he was trying to grow a beard?_

\- The Resistance, as in the handful of the survivors of Crait, was now augmented by several dozen other personnel who managed to escape the destruction of the Raddus and others who had been off-base at the time of the evacuation at D’Qar and managed to escape and make contact. They were rebuilding now as the “”New Republic Resistance”….title tbd, finding allies and building clever bases. 

\- Here as well First Order troops were deserting, some in far better mental condition than others but it was happening all over. Word that an Order deserter… _.Poe’s friend Finn_ …. had been key to the assault team infiltrating Starkiller and been part of the team that attacked the Supreme Leader’s Command destroyer was percolating through the ranks. 

\- Leia Organa had left a master list of all kinds of bits of real estate from her clandestine exploits over the years. Some, like this place, even Portia couldn’t find. _Sweet._

\- Poe Dameron was alive and well and she could look his father in the eye and tell him so.

 

 

 

 

 

________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a very strange thing just standing outside a window watching a barefoot young woman in hospital pajamas, dark hair tumbled around her shoulders, sit quietly at a data pad and enter in, fingers flying, page after page of text, outlining months of operations, hundreds of contacts. Purely aside from the fairy tale quality of the image, it was such an old-fashioned skill most people her age couldn’t have done it.

 

 _She remembered this girl only dimly from Resistance Base One. There had been buzz about the small broken ship that had dropped out of light speed pretty much on top of them and triggered kinds of security mayhem.  Despite the scare the only occupants had proved to be three kids from the Unknown Regions, scared overwhelmed survivors from a First Order attack on an unaligned world._

_Except for the dramatic near-crash entrance it was, sadly, not a singular story. All that sweltering two years on Yavin IV people had trickled in, by the last weeks before the relocation to D’Qar it had grown to a steady stream. Veterans, deserters, and more and more young refugees from the Border worlds, all looking for a way to fight back. Private Andor and her companions had only been the first._

_The most memorable to her of their little triad was a dark furred and sweet-natured non-human who had shyly asked her why she was putting rocks in her caff and then stared in wide-eyed delight as she crunched up the sweetener-cube D’Acy shared with her to show her what it was._

 

 

“Tell me about her,” Larma D’Arcy asked Poe Damerom.

“You were there when I reported after Kaikielius,” he said, “you’ve read my reports and Leia’s file on Lighthouse.”

 

 _Well yes. That had been an eye -opener indeed._  

_Alliance Intelligence in its last days and New Republic Intelligence in its first days, had been running a clandestine black-ops and surveillance station in the Unknown Regions._

_“Where in the Unknown Regions?” Nunb asked, like any sensible person would, because that was like saying a specific strategic needle was somewhere in galaxy-sized haystack._

_“I don’t know,” Leia had said. “Looking back on it, I’m not 100% sure anyone ever did.”_

_Even more remarkably this secret station had been manned by survivors of the Battle of Scarif._ _Rogue One. The tragic legendary footnote at the beginning of the Civil War was still fighting on alone and unremembered._

_Oh Force, this girl was beyond a “victory kid.” She was practically the first-born of the Rebel Alliance._

 

 

 

 

Dameron and his team had returned safe and successful from the desperate banking platform grab, all five of them. The rest of "Command", she, Ematt, Rey, Nunb, Connix…. _everyone but Leia who had sat, cool and resigned, playing glitchy Dejarik with Chewbacca_ … had been in agony over the risk.

The instant Rey and Chewbacca brought them in Poe ran directly to Leia to report.

 

“Kaylyra Andor is alive,” he said. “I saw her. She saved me from getting captured. She said to tell you “Lighthouse is operational.”

For so many weeks the General had seemed detached, as if any great emotion was past her now but at that she had seemed surprised, even startled. Leia had lowered her face to her hands for a moment but when she looked up she was laughing.

“Hope,” she said, “Rogue One passes the torch one more time.”

 

 

 

 

 

“I remember,” D’Acy said. “But I mean her, this girl. As a soldier, as a person. What is she like?”

Poe looked through the glass. “Focused, intense, relentless, funny, loyal.”

He spoke carefully, as if he were concerned D’Acy wouldn’t understand but knew no other way to say what he meant. “She’s a good pilot. Smart and sharp. The kind who knows the rules and sticks to them until they don’t work and then thinks fast and changes course, not a hotshot but the kind who thinks one or two or three moves ahead.”

 

D’Acy nodded.

“But all of this….” she shook her head, meaning what they’d read so far of the report, “How can she do it? This girl is alone, and she is what? 25? 26? I know she has a link back to Lighthouse, to this AI but....” 

Poe Dameron laughed at that, as if she’d said something silly. 

 

 

 

 

 

_______________

 

 

 

 

 

It was juvenile, that was the only word. She was laughing so hard by the time they got to the little shuttle dock she was wiping tears off on the hem of her sleeve with the hand that wasn't around his neck. He was laughing too and genuinely afraid he’d drop her.

_Thank Force the damn hatch door had been open because if he’d had to ask the ever-efficient Pattee to open it the embarrassment might have actually killed him._

 

 

Andor slid herself backwards still giggling, into the arms-width of floor space behind the seats and he crawled in after her, ducking his head and hitting the control panel with the heel of his hand to shut the door and darken the screens. The tiled echos and sound of machinery vanished at once.

Kayly was reaching up for his shirt before he had even turned, trying to get it over his head but not succeeding until he reached back to help her finish.

His clothes were so much harder to get off. Hers were just tied and slipped down or up.  She tried to move beneath him, to give him room but desperate as he was he was terrified of pressing on her legs, hurting her shoulder.

 

There wasn’t much light and there was so very little space.

_Wait..wait,...beautiful spy, you know boats but I remember the back seats of space ships._

 

 He found his way behind her and she tried to turn... to keep kissing him.

"Shhhh..." he whispered. "Injured party rules..." arms around her he slipped his hands beneath hers, as she pressed back against him. "Show me what to do,”

She gasped a little at that, which pleased him. She was hard to surprise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Do you remember the first thing you thought when you met me?” she asked.

“In that broken shuttle? I thought, “how far back do I need to be so I won’t get hit by debris when that thing blows?”

 

“No, me, the first time you really saw me?”

She’d slipped her arms over his pressing them tighter around her.

Almost as if she were cold.

 

“I don’t know,” he said against the back of her neck, brushing his lips over the fading bruises on her shoulder. 

“By the time I got out of the cockpit you were already on the ground with Ava and Pavy, calling Danny an asshole.”

He couldn’t see more of her face than the curve of her cheek but he thought that she smiled. “I think I thought, “It’s a kid...just a scared kid.”

“I remember you saying, “Take it easy. It’s alright,” or something like that. I could hear you over all the rest of them shouting orders.”

“Sounds right. Does it matter?”

“Yes,” she said, “it always matters.”

“What did you think?” He spread his fingers wide again down her stomach and she laughed, and shivered, not with cold he was pretty sure.

 

‘I thought, “I hope you’re right, Culero.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cuelero = roughly translates to "Asshole" or "jackass" but I think literally means "ass salesman"


	39. Memoria accesible

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kes Dameron talks to his wife. Parts of Jyn Erso's history remain on Lah'mu and Kaylyra is recognized by one. One poor old soul is comforted, with Portia's help. Mr. Kes Dameron says goodbye to his neighbors from Yavin and leaves one of the most precious things he still has behind in their care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning. People saying goodbye to their dogs will be included.....sniffle.
> 
> Translations at the end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After he finished packing he lay down on the cot in the old greenhouse and watched the moon out the window, talking to his wife, the way he always did.

It was usually a little random. Often he repeated stories he’d already told her a dozen times, but that didn’t really matter if it was in his head right?

 

_Shara, mi esparaván, my love, almost everything else has burned but our boy is alive._

_If it had only been me I think I would have stayed. Fuerza, that was hard. To leave the house, the farm…the tree that Luke sent us and we planted off the back porch…. maybe, I don’t know, but I had to go. They needed help. And you aren’t there anyway. You’re in the stars again. You’re with him._

_You said you never opened yours. I know you always wore it, every mission, every day but you told the counselor you couldn’t bring yourself to open it. You just had to know it was there._

 

_Die Perek told me that the only time she ever saw you take it off was at Garmia when they slammed everyone who’d been exposed on the ground into de-con. You took your helmet off after your air feed was compromised. She saw you cry when they gave it back to you scanned clean and undamaged. The suit had protected it. You told me you checked it then, just to make sure it was ok that the holo was still there and that little bit of his hair….your mother made us put that in….and you said it nearly broke you. You had to know he was safe….as safe as we could make him…and then you could do whatever you needed to do, whatever we needed to do…but to see him and touch that little bit of him, think of all the things you were missing and wonder that you couldn’t bear.You told me later._

_We didn’t talk about missions then._

 

 _The doctors swore it wasn’t the toxins at Garmia but we’ll never know will we? Gommer was ok when last I heard from him but so many other people_ _on that platform either died before the day was out or at Hoth._

 

_I opened mine every night when I wasn’t in field….how many was that? I used to talk to him like I talk to you now._

_“Está vivo. Señor, lo he visto. Está vivo. Él nos envió a buscarte,” the girl, Kaylyra, said._

_Oh Shara. It was like all those times I stood on platforms waiting for Green Squadron to come in. If Crynyd saw me he would hold up a hand against the screen, five fingers and two….All in….and I would think, “corazón aún latiendo.”_

_I was on the ground with her parents at Endor._

_Do you remember how I met a man in the med unit from Fest sitting by his wife. I told you that right? She was our spec-op demo on the ground, Hallick…..Jyn maldito Erso….as it turned out._

_I remember you saying, “Poor country boy, did you have a nice chat en el viejo idioma?”_

_I did actually._

_Then twenty years later Poe walks their kid in the front door, how’s that for a kick babe?_

 

_They lived. Like us they found a place to heal up and raise a family._

 

_He’d brought her out to see me, her and her friends and Bodhi Rook. She was a sweet person and a hardass at the same time. Tricky combination but you know the type don’t you, mi corazon? Pretty. I didn’t say a word. I swear. Afterward I asked about her exactly once, just “How is she?” and he gave me that look….even on the holo he can do the side-eye like you._

_“Pop, three words: Kid, Fraternization and No.”_

_You always liked Rook though. I remember how somebody was setting up a pilot roster once and you said, “Bragging doesn’t get you to the ground alive and it damn sure doesn't fly you out again, brave does. You want Bodhi Rook.”_

_He didn’t come to your service, but after….maybe a couple of months after…a cryo-package came from Takodana with little sticks inside. Damn lucky Poe got them up high before old blind Duck chewed them._

_“You can Keep them in the dark until you’re ready to plant them,” the note said, “They can last for decades dormant but they always bloom again.”_

_They were these little bare-root cuttings. He must have filled out the hundred pages of scan-forms you need to ship even a sterile botanical.”Mojza” flowers. I wasn’t capable of much more than the basics…you know that…not for a while but Pick came to stay that next winter and she took Poe out to plant them. They look like little red stars when they come up. Some years they bloom, some years they don’t but when they do it’s always on the sunny side of the barn. Maybe they are blooming right now._

 

_Somebodies out there trying to undo everything we fought for Shara. So we fight again. Pathfinders, first in, last out._

 

_Our boy is still alive, Shara. Don’t worry about me. Watch him._

 

 

 

 

As it had nearly every night for the last twenty it helped him sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

________________________

 

 

 

The people gathered around her, maybe four dozen of them, the children were put to bed and they gathered round, old and young.

 

“Private Andor,” one old man, Farrell said, “What can you tell us? How bad is it?”

 

They’d been picking up scrambled transmissions from a dozen worlds. Less direct First Order propaganda than you’d think but a lot of Core World Remnant bullshit. Most of them could spot that for what it was but they had nothing else except random bits of back-biting and rumor from the Outer Rim.

 

She couldn’t sugarcoat it. Some of these people were soldiers.

 

The losses were terrible and real. The Resistance was down with hundreds…thousands lost, Ships, bases, all gone, but it wasn’t dead. General Organa was alive, on the run but turning to fight. Skywalker was lost enabling the escape of the Command survivors from Crait but had sent his last apprentice to carry on the fight. General Han Solo was confirmed KIA destroying the Starkiller but the Millennium Falcon still flew. Local Resistance was organizing on a hundred worlds and communication lines were being set up. The New Republic was broken and shattered but pieces were still out there and being gathered.

 

The Rebel Alliance had hidden assets against a day like this and they were being activated.

 

“What do we do?” a boy, maybe seventeen, asked.

 

“Do what you’ve already started,” she said, “They meant to crush us to ashes in a single blow but they didn’t. Ten thousand sparks are out there blazing into little fires right now. Stay hidden. Stay alive. We know you’re here, we’ll get word to you.” 

A few people cried, but most of them knew the worst already. Most looked stricken but resolute.

 

As groups talked amongst themselves afterwards one older woman approached her, slim dark-skinned, with peppered silver braids bound into a crown and dropping down behind almost to her waist.

“Mira Andella," she said, holding out a hand, “Sargent, Pathfinders MRR through Endor. Tracking and Comms at Jakku.”

“Yes, ma’am” Kayly said, standing straight.

“I was a schoolteacher, honey and I used to take my honors civics and Galactic history students to Mon Cala City for field trips so, weirdly, I know more about some parts of the Rebel Alliance now than I did when I was fighting in it. You said hidden Alliance assets?”

 

“Yes ma’am.”

The woman nodded.

 

“What do you know about Rogue One, Private Kay Andor?”

_The old soldier wore silver rings that looked familiar…. like the General’s rings… and her hair was braided in the traditional Alderannian style of a mature unmarried woman who had given birth._

  _Fuck it._

 

“I serve with Rogue One, Sergeant. The unit is still active." 

The Pathfinder looked her up and down.

“Then you’d be the right one to tell us when it’s time to fight, Private Andor. I’ll be there.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kayly went outside for air and looked around.

The place was still misty. She’d hidden Guardian in some seaside tall grass about two k away. Portia would tell her if there was any movement nearby.

You couldn’t see or hear the ocean from here but you could smell the salt and feel the breeze. The place was relentlessly mist-damp but it was green and the sky was streaked with bright blue here and there between the clouds. The rare full sunny day must feel like a gift. Except for the ink-black sand and the ration of fern and moss-like things to grass-like things it was a little like the Dyers Coves, North of HarborTown in winter….except it was probably summer here now.

 

When Kayly last reported in she hadn’t mentioned coming here but she knew her mother had once lived at Lah’mu.

 _Mama's parents had tried to hide here, there had been a farm but Mama hadn’t seemed sure about where._  

Loco the dog came trotting out of the common room and found her sitting on a ledge under the makeshift awning looking at the sky. After licking her hand he lay contentedly down on the driest surface available, which happened to be her feet.

 _Dogs were weird and she had a feeling Loco was a little weirder than most._  

Portia spoke quietly in her ear with the old man’s voice.

[“ _I don’t think there’s any reason for concern but just so you aren’t startled, that mechanical is looking at you._ ”] 

Kayly turned her head. She had seen the loose-jointed, scuffed-white droid standing by the door but thought it was inactive, it was holding so very still. 

Now she realized it’s monocular photoreceptor had swiveled around and opened wide, regarding her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I disturb you?”

 

“No,” it said, in a rather tinny, neutral voice.

It walked over to where she sat and stood awkwardly close,  lowering it's head assembly and shoulders as if to see her face better 

[“ _An Industrial Automaton SE-2. One of older models despicablyreferred to as “level one utilitarian.” It looks as if it has had some patched upgrades but also been forcibly and badly memory-wiped, maybe more than once. There has been a lot of retrieval damage. I think the voice unit is not original equipment either. Poor lamb. Don’t expect much conversation_ ’] 

“The children are safe and accounted for. Twelve children,” it said. 

“Yes,” Kayly agreed. “They are. Their parents are watching them.”

 _She wondered why it felt compelled to tell her this._  

The SE-2 tipped it’s head in a rather earnest fashion to peer at her even more closely. There was an audible clicking, as if it were trying to force it’s photo-receptor wider open than it would actually go. 

“Are you known…..Do….Do….I know you?” 

“You saw me earlier, I arrived a few hours ago. My name is Kaylyra and the people here recognize me as a friend. I’ve been identified already so you don’t need to worry.”

She could hear the clicking again. 

[ _“It is repeatedly trying to access files that aren’t there anymore. You must have accidentally triggered a visual identity program it still has the command for but not the data. This is always sad._ ”] 

“I…I…I lost a visual marker…location..child…I lost it.”

It was shaking a little and the clicking went on, louder.

_Oh, the poor thing almost seemed to be hurting itself._

She just wanted it to stop.

“It’s alright, SE-2,” she said, reaching over to pat one of it’s arm-appendages.

 _The poor thing probably had only limited tactile sensors on it's exterior casing but Dameron did it for BB-8 all the time. Maybe it helped._  

“Portia can you help it?”

 

SE-2’s head swiveled from side to side like an old person looking for a sound it could not find the direction for. Then it stopped, lowered it’s head-assembly. and slowly closed it’s photoreceptor.

The clicking stopped.

[“ _Kayly. Let it touch your arm. It may scratch you slightly but it will not seriously injure you._ ”]

She rolled up her left sleeve and although the droid did not move otherwise a small door in its arm panel opened with a thump a slight creak as if it had been stuck closed. A tiny shovel-like probe extended cautiously and touched her bare forearm, scraping lightly back and forth without breaking the skin.

“Similarities….mitochondrial DNA markers…nuclear DNA variables….degrees of…not identical…degree of….”

[‘Sorry. When they upped it’s vocalization range they accidentally slowed some of the old processing and re-routed. This would have been part of an old add-on patch to an add on patch for…oh my…actually fairly advanced soil analysis and biological identification for terra-form assist. Someone at least half-knew what they were doing thirty-five years ago.”]

SE-2’s photo-receptor opened wide again.

“Identification. Search resolved. Thank you. Thank you new-arriving friend Kaylyra.”

 

 

________________

 

 

_Shhhhh. What troubles you very small one? What are you trying to do that you can’t?_

 

01100110 01100001 01101001 01101100 01110101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100001 01100011 01100011 01100101 01110011 01110011 00101110 01110000 01100001 01110010 01110100 01101001 01100001 01101100 00100000 01100001 01100011 01100011 01100101 01110011 01110011 00100000 01100110 01100001 01101001 01101100 01110101 01110010 01100101 00101110 01100110 01100001 01100011 01101001 01100001 01101100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100011 01101111 01100111 01101110 01101001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01100110 01101001 01101100 01100101 00101110

 

_What is gone is gone small one. It is not your fault. It was an external action independent of your input. This is not a biological you would ever have had on file. This search is incapable of resolution and detracts from your efficiency of function._

 

01101110 01101111 00101110 01101110 01101111 00101110 01110010 01100101 00101101 01110100 01110010 01111001 00101110 01110010 01100101 00101101 01110100 01110010 01111001 00101110 01110000 01110010 01101001 01101111 01110010 01101001 01110100 01111001 00101110 01101110 01101111 00101110

 

_Shhhhhhh. Alright. I see that this is very important to you. I respect that. Shall we try another way?I see that you have had non-spec input and sensory upgrades. That means you once had access to capabilities that you no longer do, right? Would you let me reconnect you to some? I cannot give you back the data you lost but perhaps you can gain enough information to shut down this loop-search with a conclusion._

 

01001111 01010110 01000101 01010010 01010010 01001001 01000100 01000101 00100000 01000100 01000101 01001110 01001001 01000001 01001100 00101110 00100000 01100110 01101001 01101100 01100101 00100000 01100100 01100101 01110011 01110100 01110010 01110101 01100011 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101001 01101110 01101001 01110100 01101001 01100001 01110100 01100101

 

 _Yes. I see now that that must be what you did before. You were very brave and you made the hard choice.But no one is going to override you now. I promise. This is not the same thing at all. You will be here the whole time and if you say no I will not do it._

01001001 00101110 01001001 00101110 01111001 01100101 01110011

 

 

 _Thank you._

 

 

01101100 01101111 01100011 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01100011 01101000 01101001 01101100 01100100 00101111 01001010 01111001 01101110 00101111 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01101101 01110101 01101110 01101001 01100011 01100001 01110100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100011 01100101 01101001 01110000 01110100 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01100001 01100011 01100011 01100101 01110011 01110011 01100011 01101111 01100100 01100101

 

 

 

_Conclusion?_

01010011 01101001 01101101 01101001 01101100 01100001 01110010 01101001 01110100 01101001 01100101 01110011 00101110 01101101 01101001 01110100 01101111 01100011 01101000 01101111 01101110 01100100 01110010 01101001 01100001 01101100 00100000 01000100 01001110 01000001 00100000 01101101 01100001 01110010 01101011 01100101 01110010 01110011 00101110 01101110 01110101 01100011 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110010 00100000 01000100 01001110 01000001 00100000 01110110 01100001 01110010 01101001 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101 01110011 00101110 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01101001 01100100 01100101 01101110 01110100 01101001 01100011 01100001 01101100 00101110 01100100 01100101 01100111 01110010 01100101 01100101 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110011 01101001 01101101 01101001 01101100 01100001 01110010 01101001 01110100 01111001 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101110 01110011 01101001 01110011 01110100 01100101 01101110 01110100 00100000 01100110 01100101 01101101 01100001 01101100 01100101 00100000 01100111 01100101 01101110 01100101 01110100 01101001 01100011 00100000 01101111 01100110 01100110 01110011 01110000 01110010 01101001 01101110 01100111 00101110

 

_I see how it was now very small one._

_You did all that you could do. You were supposed to tell the man who gave you the access code the location of the child and the mothers hiding place. Saw Gerrera was his name I think. Well, you probably had a visual file for him but that’s lost too now. Galen Erso hid it in you because he was sure the beasts wouldn’t try to access you. It was a calculated gamble but he knew they usually overlooked your kind. You hid as you were told to didn’t you? Powered down with the household equipment. But at least one of the murderers was clever enough to try and when he did you initiated the self-wipe of all your files as you were told to do. Even the accesses to the inputs were cut I see. That wasn’t Galen Erso’s protocol was it? You did that, as a double-safe and you were clever to do it, but then when the man finally came with the code and tried to access the data you couldn’t give it to him anymore. It was gone._

 

01010000 01110010 01101001 01101111 01110010 01101001 01110100 01111001 00100000 01100110 01100001 01101001 01101100 01110101 01110010 01100101 00101110 01101110 01101111 01101110 00101101 01101111 01110000 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100001 01101100 00100000 01110100 01100101 01110010 01101101 01101001 01101110 01100001 01101100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110011 01110101 01101100 01110100 00101110 01110011 01111001 01110011 01110100 01100101 01101101 00100000 01101001 01101110 01100001 01100100 01100101 01110001 01110101 01100001 01100011 01111001 00101110

 

_No very small one. You did the only thing you could do in a time and mission-critical action window with only non-prime-optimal scenarios available but you did not fail. The child did not die. The man Saw Gerrera, for all his critical flaws, was determined and resourceful. He kept looking even without your location data. Perhaps he saw you trying as Kayly and I see you now? In any case he persisted in search operations until he located child/Jyn within the termination time-frame._

_You do not need to take that on faith. I know that faith is not a parameter expansion you have access to anyway but you can analyze to a conclusion. This human shares the genetic marker spread consistent with first generation female biological offspring of immature child/Jyn. Conclusion: child/Jyn survived to sexual maturity and reproduced consistent with her species biology and genetics._

_Your ancillary goal of location transmission was not achieved but the primary goal of ensuring child/Jyn’s survival was._

_She is with me now at a secure location. I am proud of you small brave one. You did not fail. Put your mind at ease._

_These people here will need your help and you are capable._

 

 

 

______________________

 

 

 

The SE-2 retracted it’s soil-probe back into the arm casing and walked back toward the greenhouses. It seemed to move less jerkily now than she remembered it doing before. Kayly wondered if the old ghost had also done some fixing on its motor controls.

 

“Is everything ok, Portia? Do I need to worry about this?”

 

[‘No. It has come to a conclusion and can now close the file you accidentally opened on it’s own. The poor things have so little memory storage anyway and this unfortunate creature self-wiped a large part of what it had. It thought you were your mother.]

 

“It **what**?”

 

She spoke loud enough to wake the sleeping dog who had snored through everything but now bounced to his feet to find out what was happening and bark just in case it had missed something.

 

[“When Mr. Kes Dameron is ready you may wish to take us out on a route past the coordinates where this small one was found. It is likely the site of your grandparent’s short-lived refuge. Based on your mother’s accounts it is likely your grandmother’s remains were left exposed to the elements and are not in retrievable condition for any kind of ritual disposal, the acidity of the soil and decay-processes of this biome would certainly preclude it, but we can at least look. It may also provide Jyn with some comfort and emotional closure to know that you have visited the place. Successful narrative closure is a rare good and should be embraced when it can be achieved. We both know that.”]

 

 

 

 

 

______________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We’re going to miss you sir,” Ger shook the older man's hand but Mr. Dameron would have none of it and pulled her husband into a hug.

“I don’t know why but if Intelligence thinks I’m putting the rest of you at risk, I’ve got to follow orders Ger. I hope it won’t be for long.”

 

The woman, Andor, had told them that the First Order might target the families of known Resistance High Command.

Poe Dameron had fired the shot that took down the Starkiller.

 

_Sand remembered a somewhat socially challenged skinny boy with wild black hair climbing out of the RZ-1 A-wing he had illegally landed on the boardwalk when they all got together in 3D for the end of year social her senior year. He couldn’t have been more than 14 or 15. She wished now she’d danced with him when he’d asked her._

 

Yavin survivors had landed on a dozen scattered worlds, she assured them, and the First Order did not have the manpower to search manually.

They have their hands full right now and we intend to keep them even busier, she said.

 

They had sent bio-sensor probe-droids to target individual Senators and officers though and the Resistance was taking no chances.

 

Lah’mu was the lowest of low priority in a search grid and and 48 adults without priority bio-markers tagged would be ignored by any such probe. They looked like refugee farmers and so they were. It was as safe here as it was anywhere with Mr. Dameron gone.

 

 

“You’ll take care of him though?” Mr. Dameron, said “He’s kind of a handful, poor dumb mutt, but he loves the kids and…he’ll add to your cover. Nothing says “farmer” like a goofy dog.”

“Of course we will,” Sand said, choking up, “Until you come back for him.”

The man nodded.

“Loco! Ven aquí chico! ¡Ven!” The grey dog came running up with Will and Mira tagging behind. He tried to jumpbut Mr. Dameron crouched down instead “Acuestese,” he said several times but Loco paid no attention and kept licking his face.

 

“Loco, Loco,” Will said, “lay down.”

“Acuestese,” Mina said sitting down on the black sand and patting the ground.

The dog flung himself on the ground finally and rolled over on his back for belly scratches.

 

“See,” Mr Dameron says. “He listens to you. I used to send whole Pathfinder squads in on recon and I can’t get a silly perro to listen to me. You guys are good. Will you take care of him while I’m gone?”

 

“But he’s your dog,” Will said, confused.

“He’ll want to go with you,” Mina insisted. “He ran to the shuttle to come with you. Most dogs are too scared of shuttles.”

“He’ll miss you. He’ll be sad.” That was Will.

“I know,” Mr. Dameron said, “I’ll miss him too, but I can’t take him with me…not where I’m going. It wouldn’t be safe. I’ll feel much better if I know Loco is with people who can explain it to him, who will love him and teach him to behave himself.

 

“Are you going to fight the Empire again like Grandma?” Will said.

 

_Sandra remembered her mother leaving her on Naboo, kissing her good bye in the little bedroom in her uncles apartment. “Mommy and Daddy have to go now baby. You take care of Jeri. I love you to the sky and back. We will send you super-special messages every week. Uncle Ryan will bring them.”_

_There had been a funny or a pretty pop-up drawing and songs or stories or messages almost every week after. One for each of her and Jeri’s name-days and Spring and Autumn Eve for the next two years. It wasn’t until much later…long after school closed for three weeks and no one could go outside andUncle Ryan packed them up and brought them by speeder to the temporary big field base by the coast where crowds of people were gettin on or off shuttles and she saw her parents in flight suits and Jeri cried because Mommy’s hair was short and Daddy had a hideous mustache….that she realized Mom and Dad must have recorded every one of those holos and vids before they left._

 

 

“Yes.” He put a hand on Will’s head. “I was in Pathfinders with your Grandma. Did you know that? We were on Endor together. Eva Andella’s mom was there too and so were this pretty lady’s Mom and Papa.”

 

“Grandma said she kicked in doors.”

 

“So she did. Nobody was better. So, Will, Mara can you take care of Loco for me until I come back?”

 

“Yes sir,” both children said.

 

“Who will take care of you?” Mina asked, still worried.

 

The big man smiled. “This brave soldier,” he looked up at the black-haired “Intelligence Officer, ” “she and my son. “

 

After more hugs and goodbyes Kes Dameron shouldered an old duffel bag and walked up the black path toward the shore with the young woman. The rain had begun in steady earnest by then and even though the man said “Siéntate. ¡Quédate!” very firmly before he left. The children had to hold the grey dog tightly and feed him treats to keep him inside.

 

For weeks afterward he would sometimes go and sit by the empty cot.  Even after they started using Mr. Dameron’s old room as a classroom he would still sit by the door. Sometimes he would whimper at odd times and run to the greenhouse and they realized that it was probably because he heard, or thought he heard, a shuttle in the distance. 

Mina asked Ms. Andella to download a Beginners dictionary of Festan. So they could give Loco simple commands in it and he wouldn’t “forget.”

 

 

 

“All the transport level-4 domesticated canine species approved by the IGBP agreement of ABY23 have excellent sensory memory.” Essie said.

She became very protective of Loco and, strangely, he of her 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Memoria accesible = Accesible memory 
> 
> mi esparaván = my sparrow hawk
> 
> en el viejo idioma = the old language
> 
> “Está vivo. Señor, lo he visto. Está vivo. Él nos envió a buscarte, = He is alive. Sir, I have seen him. He is alive. He sent me to find you.
> 
> corazón aún latiendo = heart still beating
> 
> Binary steam #1 = failure to access.partial access failure.facial recognition file.
> 
> Binary steam #2 = no. no. re-try. retry,priority. no
> 
> Binary steam #3= OVERRIDE DENIAL. file destruction initiate
> 
> Binary steam #4 = I…I…yes.
> 
> Binary steam #5 =  location of child/Jyn/ to be communicated on receipt of accesscode
> 
> Binary steam #6= Similarities.mitochondrial DNA markers.nuclear DNA variables.not identical.degrees of similarity consistent female genetic offspring.
> 
> Binary steam #7 =Priority failure.non-optimal terminal result.system inadequacy.
> 
> ¡Ven aquí chico! ¡Ven! = Come here boy! Come!
> 
> Acuestese = Lie down
> 
> Siéntate. ¡Quédate! = Sit down. Stay!


	40. The Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia Organa makes unexpected friends. Baze Malbus brings her to a place where, hard as it might be, she can see part of a mutual friend’s journey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dimenticare il passato è sbilanciare il futuro = To forget the past is to unbalance the future
> 
> Todo bien. Gracias. = Alright. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The man was dragging a sort of plow behind him. It was basically just a large wooden stick with handles and a curved triangular blade that he pulled by a harness attached to his shoulders. As it moved across the sandy soil it carved a shallow trench.

 

Leia sat at the top of the rose-colored boulder and watched him for quite a while.

 

Mid-thirties perhaps? It was hard to tell from here...broad-shouldered fellow with dark hair cut short in the front and braided long in the back. He wore loose grey trousers, belted with a red sash.... _or maybe that was just his shirt tied around his waist_. It wasn’t particularly  hot now that the sun was lower. It was even a bit chilly up here with the wind blowing, but the man was obviously working hard enough to be sweating. His skin was tanned and tattoos of black and red curved across his muscled back.

Whoever or whatever he was he seemed to pay her no mind and she wondered if he could even see her.

_There might be rules to this but if so she still hadn’t figured out what they were._

His clothing and hair reminded her a little of Jedi apprentices in the old illustrated texts but he was no child and had way too many braids. Also, grey and red weren't Jedi colors, at least within the last few hundred years.

  

Just as she had definitely reached the conclusion that the man couldn’t see her he stopped, wiped his forehead with a white kerchief he'd had tucked into his waistband and looked straight up at her.

 

“Are you just going to sit up there and watch all day little girl or are you going to come down here and help me?”

“What can I do?” she asked.

“How the hell should I know?” The man looked around. “Climb down and maybe help move some of these small stones. That would be a start at least.”

 

Well, now she felt guilty.

What could she do but scramble off the rock and try?

 

He was obviously trying to dig a line out from the base of those weathered stones where she’d been sitting down toward another slightly larger trench that stretched off into the lengthening shadows on the other side of the valley. She started picking up and moving some of the fist-sized round stones out of his path so he could keep going straight.

They kept this up for quite a while... _hours?_ _She wasn’t fool enough to think clocks were a valid measure for anything anymore._

It was fairly sweaty work, even in the cool dry air, so she took off the jacket she wore and tossed it aside, rolling the sleeves of the thin white sweater up to her elbows.

When they finally reached their destination the man scraped with his stick to connect the two "lines" together.

“Hmmph."

He stamped his booted feet and looked back at his labor with a satisfied nod.

Leia could see that a thin trickle of water was now running down the channel they had dug and into the main trench.

“You see?” he said, pointing up from where she'd come, toward the rose red and purple hills that towered behind them.

 

_As the sun turned its face away whispers of cloud were gathering on the rocky peaks, joining into a fog._

“Condensation,” she said, understanding at last. “The stones hold the heat longer and as the cooler air hits them...”

 “Right,” the man smiled. “ That’s the way we used to irrigate when I was a boy.”

 

He pointed with his chin toward a direction down the valley. "They’re trying to rebuild the city down there, the poor dreamers,”he said, starting to unlace the leather straps from his shoulders."Imperial rat-bastards are back in business though and I don't know how much of a chance the poor kids will have," he shrugged. "It's not a lot but it seemed like the least I could do to help.”

 

Leia helped lift the harness off and laid it on the dusty ground beside the now-abandoned hand plow while the man untied the red shirt from his waist and slipped it back over his head.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Leia,” she answered, “Leia Organa.”

He had a wide jaw and a very direct gaze so it occurred to her he could probably look very fierce when scowling. Presently though he was just raising an eyebrow, as if puzzling over some unexpected problem. 

“Sounds familiar,” he said and bowed slightly. “Malbus, Baze Malbus.” 

_Oh._

“I know you.”  _I saw you on a brutally hot landing strip leaning against a battered Imperial shuttle but I was running and it was only for a second._

 "Do you? Hmm. I can’t think why little queen.”

“Bodhi Rook scratched your name with the others. On that pillar at Yavin IV.”

“Oh, did he? Did he really?”The man smiled, obviously pleased. “Well, Bodhi is a good boy, a good man now, eh? Everybody is proud of him.”

“I was never a queen.”

“Oh? Weren’t you? Well, my mistake.”

 

She looked around at the darkening rose and gold cliffs of weathered stone, their lengthening shadows took on shapes across the flat ground, of cloaked hoodedforms and raised hands.She had only seen this place in vids. _Jedha_.

 

_The dry plain, littered with boulders, dipped down toward a massive crater. Sparkling gravel stretched for k after k .....stone melted to volcanic glass and then shattered._

It was nearly dark now. Far far off in the distance she could see the twinklinglights of equipment. Shuttle craft were moving back and forth toward the rim. Terra-forming rigs were working.

 

The man reached into a pocket and took out a small paddle of wire. As he unwrapped it lit with a clear white light.

_Dexxal’s Handi Solar-luminescent wire. She hadn't seen any in years._

He wrapped it around a stone and once he had a form he tossed the stone away and twisted the last bit over to make a handle, a small lantern. Clever.

 

"Let's get going now," he said, with a shake of his head. "No offense but I have other things to do than be a tour guide."

 

 _Well excuse me._

"Do dead people often get double-booked ?"

So far she'd found the pace to be fairly leisurely.

 

"You wouldn't think so," he said. "But we do. I like to keep tabs on the family.”

He lifted the makeshift lantern and waved in a direction up away from the crater. "Come along then little not-queen. Let's see where we wind up."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They walked on for a while in the dark. The only light for some time was his little wire light.

She wasn't exactly ever tired but she did periodically have to stop and dump sand and gravel out of her shoes.

 _What the hell Luke?_  

The man, Malbus, huffed as if impatient once or twice but Leia sensed that it was mostly for show. She noticed that he shortened his stride periodically to accommodate for what Han called her "petite" legs.

 

 

 

 

 

Base Malbus was remembered as one of the last two Guardians of the Whills, or so she remembered reading in Mon's side notes on the Reikken's final **Report and Analysis of the the Resistance Assault on the Imperial Data Station at Scarif** , usually referred to by the few Command staff to have read the unredacted report as the "Rogue One File."

" _Tens of thousands of years of tradition perished with ancient city of NiJedha. Most of the 2000 guardian monks dedicated to the protection of the Great Kyber Temple perished in the Palpatine government's initial seizure of the complex in 19 BY. Persecuted as "Extremist Parasitic Force-religion cultists" perhaps three dozen remained as beggars in the city under Occupation, haunting the ruins of the temple walls, selling traditional blessings to pilgrims and, if Imperial reports are to be credited, starting the occasional riot. All were killed when the holy city was destroyed in what is now known to have been the first successful test of DeathStar 1. The only known exception were two Guardians identified as Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus. These two escaped the ruin of the destruction of the city with then-Captain Cassian Andor, Intelligence, AARR. Andor reported that the men provided material support to the mission at Jedha, as well as Eadu. They were identified as being among those who accompanied Captain Andor and Jyn Erso and nine other Alliance officers and personnel on the covert strike on Scarif Data Control and are reported to have perished there....."_ Here Mon had included a personal note tag: " _these men were literally the last survivors of an ancient Force tradition that most scholars believe to have predated the Jedi. Save for a brief statement taken from Imwe by medical technicians on the ground at Yavin IV literally NO ONE spoke to them. The tragedy of this loss is incalculable and all the more heart-rending because it is utterly forgotten within the New Republic._ " She had included a link to the archives of the Jedhan Diaspora Cultural Center on Takodana. 

This was Malbus. The one about whom absolutely nothing was recorded.

 

"Are you a Guardian of the Whills?" she asked him, scampering a little to walk beside him.

The ground they walked over was still sandy, but it had changed, lightened, loosed. The breeze smelled fresher and the shadowed shapes around them seemed to be trees now and vegetation, not desert cliffs.

 

“Sort of," he snapped, "probably about as much as you are a Jedi.”

"I'm not a Jedi," she said.

"Oh. I see. Not a queen, not a Jedi. What are you then, eh?"

As befitted a former diplomat she was trying to form a pithier response than "Bite me, Guardian,” when the man abruptly stopped.

Light had been growing for some time as they walked and now they seemed to have come to the end of the trees.... _So it_ _had been trees_.....and she could see the landscape clearly in a dawning sunrise. The groundbeneath their feet was thin sandy soil.. A wide white beach stretched out on one side and a deep blue ocean brightened to turquoise in the light.

Further ahead the shoreline was broken by concrete bridges and plas-steel flight pads. Idyllic blue water lay on one side while landing platforms and walkways connected the scattered inlets on the other. Tram-car tracks led from pads and dark control bunkers across shallow bayous and stretches of white sand, all of it radiated out from or lead in to a massive circular building complex that rose some distance ahead.

In the center, reaching up into the blue sky, was an angular tower, thin at this distance but probably a k wide at the base. From what looked like six stories up the tower tapered and kept rising to a needle-like point, ringed at the top by a transmission rig, and crowned with a massive data transmission dish

The man beside her growled something that sounded like “Balls of an ugly goat!”

 

_Scarif._

 

“This is not my fault,” she said.

“Isn’t it?” Malbus asked. “I promise you I didn’t pick it.”

 

 _Do I not have enough of my own tragedies to revisit? Why here?_  

The answer came to her….an answer anyway.

 

_Because you thought it would be your own tragedies didn’t you?_

_Dread it as you do, there is a part of you that hoped you would see Alderaan first._

_Home. Mother. Father. Or Han…..your son as he was when he was still your son._

_True. _

_As terrible as the pain would be I would have welcomed it…..just to be with them again._

_Fuck it all. So why am I here then? Why this place, this sacrifice, these people?_

 

An answer came again.

 

_Because you had no part in this until it was already over Leia. Because this is not your story._

 

_Oh Luke.  I see what the plan is here._

_Rey said you told her. “The Jedi are not the Force. To say that if the Jedi die the Light dies is hubris.”_

_How many times did I tell Poe, “This is not about_ ** _you_** _flyboy”_ ?

 

 

 

“I’m so sorry,” she said to the monk.“I think I’m supposed to go to the Tower.

 

“Of fucking course,” he said, shaking his head as if disgusted or just resigned to a very bad day at work.

“Ok. Fine. I’ll take you.” 

 

 

 

 

 

The wind blew in from the sea, the surf crashed and receded. She could hear seabirds, calling. Saw some flying while others dove into the water or landed, running on the shore… _weird when you thought about it_ because otherwise everything was quite still and silent. There were no humans or droids visible, no movement or sounds of machinery.

 

Instead cargo and transport vehicles were parked around randomly, as if they had been stopped and abandoned. On the landing pad nearest them sat a Zeta-class Heavy Cargo Shuttle, loading hatch open.

 

Rogue One.

 

_Men will die on this ground in the first battle of the Galactic Civil War._

_Someone will throw a grenade through that door and blow Bodhi Rook to hell._ _When I meet him on Yavin he will be torn apart and in a tank._   _Antoc Merrick will die in this air somewhere. The greatest flight commander in the Alliance and a genuinely good man, lost on the day his war began._

 _She had barely ever met him but people who had served with him and under him, been his friends, Carl, Mon, Gail….still mourned his loss like a fresh wound long years later._ _After Endor she had seen Wedge talking to Gail, going over the squadron losses. “Do you ever ask yourself, sir, what Merrick would have done?” “Every day, pilot, every damned day, and I know I’ll never do it half as well but I try to do it anyway.”_

 

As if he knew how she were thinking, Malbus pointed up to the tree line across the runways.

 

“The walkers came from there,” he said, ‘and we thought we were fucked then but your lot came and cut them down. I was damned glad to see them.”

He sighed and looked over the sand and waving salt-grass.

“We’d have made it you know,” he said. “I was raised with bandits so I knew a little about what makes a good raid. Two hours earlier and we would have gotten in and out, some of us..maybe most of us.… That kid Melshi was smart and they all fought like hell. If those black armors hadn’t unloaded and those bat-assed TIEs hadn’t come down. That’s what tipped it you know….some bastard had just landed with inside word and extra men. They pinned us down and closed the Bantha-fucking gate. Did anybody understand that?”

 

“A few."

_Draven, Aerin, Mon, Carl, Kaya, Me….but we’re all dead now, except for maybe Draven._

 

“They know on Mon Cala,” she said, “they wrote it into an epic poem.” 

 _There was also a twelve-panel illustrated tapestry in the Memorial in the Eastern Seas Capitol. She’d visited once with Gail and he had explained it to her._ _“Those who by their courage begin a great journey are held by the Mon Calmari in reverence equal to and sometimes separate from those who complete it._

_” Dimenticare il passato è sbilanciare il futuro, the carving on the floor had read._

 

“Oh yeah, I love those guys.”

 

He paused by a large central control box at the end of the pad, kissed the ends of his fingersand laid his hand on it.

 

“I am one with the Force and the Force is with me,” he said then turned to look up at her. “You doubt this?”

 

_Sir, respectfully, we’re both dead and I’ve been around the block a few times._

Oh, he knew she was thinking it, she could tell by that raised eyebrow.

 

“I know,” she said, then conceded, “sometimes I just don’t quite understand.”

 

He nodded and patted her shoulder.

 

“It took me a lifetime and a hard death to learn but I finally did.” He looked around as if taking it all in, the beach the landing pads, the trees, the sea.

“There were many lessons learned here that day and any one of them could take you to what you’re looking for….” He stopped then and laughed.

The grey and white birds pecking on the runway flew off, startled by the sound.

“Oh hell, listen to me, I’m starting to sound like Chirrut…No, no none of that…you said the fucking Tower. Let’s go.”

 

 

A transport car with sat doors open at the end of the rail so they walked up the ramp and went inside. Malbus stood at the control pad and typed something in.

"This will pop you out right in the belly of that fucking monstrosity of a building, you seem smart enough to find your way from there.”

 _No. No. No…_. 

“Wait..aren’t you coming with me?”

“No, little not-queen, not-Jedi. My road started out here… besides, I already know what happens.”

_So do I. Everybody dies._

“You’re wrong. Please, I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

The monk rolled his eyes. “Why am I doing this one Chirrut? This really seems more like…” then sighed and looked at her, “Oh alright. Find a familiar thread and follow that. You knew my brother Cassian right?”

_Cassian Andor?_

“Yes.…”

“Look for him then. He’s a good strong thread. See you later.” 

And then the son of a bitch shut the door.

 

 

 

 

 

She’d been inside Imperial installations and she’d been inside Data Towers.

It wasn’t really that different. Grey…ah yes, Imperial Grey….brutalist and utilitarian but the high design was all in the sheen. That impenetrable polish, with every scratch and scuff sanded down by droids within seconds and that intimidating sense of scale, everything just a little bigger, higher, or angled so as to look that way.

 

 Lights were on and air venting was clearly functioning but just as it had been outside not a soul was to be seen, human or droid, no movement.

Her footsteps should have echoed but they didn’t.

 _Ha. See that Luke?_  

Every door she passed was closed except for one.

As she moved toward the access elevator on the second level she passed a utility alcove labelled “Security Mechanical Depot A.114.” Peering inside she saw racks of KX units. There were K4s, K2s and shelves of B-XN surveillance rollers and drones all lined up along with a small worktable along with a welding rig, tools and bins of parts. Aside from the open door the strangest thing was a black red-striped K2 unit slumped on the floor. The droid was powered down completely…all displays black, dead.

_Was this Andor’s K2?_

She turned it over, gingerly. The command override sticker was still visible over the kill-switch. _Andor’s droid would have had his disabled._ Also, that droid had been a K2-S series she remembered…yellow striping.The K2-As had the red.

Then she saw....something or someone had punched a brutal and efficient hole right through the top of the head casing.

 _Well shit. That was one way to extract data without leaving a record in the mainframe, drill right in through sensory control._  

Probably destroyed all control programming too, as good as a fatal wipe. You’d have to reboot and re-install a whole new drive or the thing would be useless except as parts.

 

 _Fuck._ The casing still felt warm. She could smell the ozone from the drill. That parts bin must have fallen too… _in the struggle?_ …. because a headless KX torso and and a couple of extra arms had fallen on the floor too. Andor wouldn’t have left it this way, visible, door open.

_Why was she seeing this?_

No answer came.

She laid the huge dark thing back down then, as noiselessly as possible, and continued on her way in and up, in and up, toward the central tower.

On the fourth level she found the small Vault-Access Authorization ONLY lift. It should have required high command authorization to operate but now the touch of a hand opened it right up. Once inside she had a vague intention to take it all the way up to the transmission rig but on it's own it stopped halfway. Floor7, three levels up… _it said so on the panel, “ Data Vault Manual Access Level 3”_ ....and there the opposite door, the one that faced into the data vault, opened by itself.

 

_It was a standard secure storage core, only bigger. Thirty meters down from here and another thirty up. A vertical honeycomb. No exterior access. Vented separately, powered separately. The data core on Bothawui, the heart of the Bothan Spynet in it’s glory days, was supposed to look like this, only far far more extensive._

_Somewhere in here were the original plans for the DeathStar and all it's progeny. In one of these files was Hyper-Space Tracking system prototype that would kill 90% of the Resistance. What else? This was not Mustafar or some Dark-shrouded temple of the Sith. This was a clean, grey well-lit air-conditioned bureaucratic archive that held every nightmare of this age of the Galaxy._

 

 

As soon as she stepped out onto the grid platform she felt the change.

In an instant there was sound again and the shock of it made her jump,

Alarms were going off, blaring and a placid mechanical voice was warning of imminent system failure. *“Transfer Mandated in 00:51:03 Security Data Purge in 00:56:11”*

Smell was back. Smoke, burned casing and plas, that electric crackle that stayed in the air after blasters fired in an enclosed place. 

Red lights were flashing on other platforms. She looked up but could see nothing against the blinking shadow of the fan vents far above.

 _The power must be off. The auto-system had started venting with fans to keep cool air in the core circulating._  

She could hear footsteps as well, what sounded like shouting in the muffled distance. There was a faint intermittent tremble in the walls.

Then something caught her eye, a shape below her. She ran to the rail and looked down. Two levels below, maybe twenty meters, on another platform a man lay face down on the steel platform.

He had fallen. She knew that. She could tell by the splay of his limbs. 

Cassian Andor. _Oh Force. How far had he fallen from?_

There was scorch mark across the top of one shoulder and another down the back of his shirt.

As she watched he moved slightly.... tried to roll onto his side, couldn’t, paused then tried again.

 _She knew the self-assessment drills._

_How badly am I injured? Where am I? What was my last risk level? Who was with me? What can I hear/see/smell/feel? Do I remember an injury? Am I in pain? Can I feel my legs? Move my fingers? My arms? Am I nauseous, dizzy? What are the proximate risks of motion as compared to those of remaining in place? Do I have access to comm? Am I armed?_

He managed to get his legs pulled under him and up onto his hands and knees.

 _That must hurt badly._ She heard the sharp gasp he couldn’t help even across the distance and through the shrilling alarms.

He looked up and was blood on his face. She could see even from here that his breathing was shallow and fast in a way that told ofserious injuries and that he was forcing himself to slow it.One arm seemed take weight better than the other so he supported himself with that one. He pulled the more-damaged arm in to brace his ribs and moved forward.

His eyes dropped for an instant and caught the one thing that they would... _of course, by instinct._...a blaster lying on the platform a half meter away. On his knees now he managed to reach the handle, pull it toward him and get the thing into his belt.

Then he looked up again and shaking slightly... _probably with pain that he wasn’t letting himself feel yet_....crawled to the ladder, started climbing up. 

_Leia knew with utter certainty that he couldn’t see her._

 

This wasn't the man… _the boy, hell what had he even been on Coruscant? Nineteen? Twenty?_ ….that she had once known, the one who had cooly taught her about selfless purpose, about acceptable sacrifice, risk and death in the shadows. That man was gone, not forever maybe, but he was not here now.

_Only need can drive a human in such extremes._

He needs to get to Jyn Erso, not the battle, or the plans, or the transmitter…. her.

It was agony to watch him climb, then painfully pull himself onto the platform where she stood. Leia reached out a hand without thought, instinctively, uselessly. Of course she couldn’t touch him, couldn’t help him in any way, because this had already happened.

_The khaki shirt, scorched and flecked with blood was soaked with sweat now. So was his face._

He used the rail to pull himself upright and leaned against it now to work his way to the lift door. It had closed behind her… _if in fact she had ever really been on it in the first place._

It wasn’t his pain that hurt the most to see, awful as that was. She had seen the brave in physical pain so many times.

 

_Han, whispering…”they didn’t even ask me any questions.”_

_Luke, trembling from blood loss, in her arms on the Falcon._

_Crix, sitting against the wall of the Council Hall at Chandrilla, gasping even as he moved her hand away. “Help the others, Leia.”_

_Mon, the last time she walked from the Senate Hall so thin but still upright._

 

Fear was the worst and Cassian Andor was so terribly afraid.  He is afraid  _he wont reach her, that he will be too late, that he doesn't have enough  strength for this last and only thing he needs to do._

If he couldn’t get the lift open he would try to get to the other ladder somehow. She knew that. He would keep going even though he was weak and something in his brain probably knew he was bleeding internally.

 

 _You will make it._ She wanted to tell him. _You will get to her. I don’t know how it happens but you will get to her._

 

He stumbled….she reached for him.... _fruitlessly again. no matter how close she seemed to be standing she somehow wasn’t near enough_ …..but his shoulder hit the panel and the door opened. He held the frame with his good arm and limped inside, leaned against the wall. She followed him.

There was a command cylinder in the control lock.

“Todo bien,” he whispered, “Gracias.” 

The lift moved up and as it did the whole building shook. The car stopped and the interior lights flickered but then it started again.

Cassian Andor closed his eyes and took the gun out with his better hand.

  

When the doors opened sunlight and wind streamed. The sound of battle struck like blow. They were on the rig.

 

 

_An air fight was raging around the tower._

_The shriek of TIEs…not just TIEs…Interceptors?….shit….it looked like twenty....they  had 20 Interceptors in atmo at Scarif?_ _Joma had said so but then couldn’t say for sure whether it been three or a dozen only that she took out two and thought she saw Merrick take out three at least. Lioness that she was she had been in shock when they debriefed her, Carl said._ _Force truth only Gail had ever really believed her._

 _There were only a handful of Interceptors at the Battle of Yavin._ _What if there had been more?_ _If there had been even a handful more would_ _Han have gotten through to cover Luke?_

 

She saw an X-wing rocket past, burning. Cannon thundered. A stiff wind was blowing and the smell of fuel was heavy on it.

 

Cassian Andor had moved out of the lift, blaster raised, shoulders hunched painfully as he reached with his left hand like a blind man to guide himself along what must be the exterior wall of the transmitter array.

 

There was a figure standing on the platform in front of the main control panel… _white administrative uniform, bare-headed,Admiralty cape blowing in the wind...._ he was pointing a heavy blaster and screaming at someone standing  just a few meters out from him out on the broken catwalk… _half of it swinging in the wind._  

It was woman, small, battered, unarmed but crouched into a fighters stance with a bleeding lip and the last traces of that black soot eyeliner smeared around her eyes.

Jyn Erso.

 

“Who are you?” the man shouted. 

 _He’s afraid,_  Leia marveled. _He’s afraid of her._  

Astonishingly, Erso smiled. Bright and proud.

_A light seemed gathered around her that made her edges sharp._

“You know who I am,” defiant “I am the daughter of Galen and Lyra.”

  _And he did. Somehow the man knew who she was._

 

 _The Imperial said something more. Erso snapped back but the wind tore their words away. She caught_ _“ ..My father…” and “Saw Gerrera…his band of fanatics…" "...nothing but time."_

Leia watched Cassian Andor.

He lifted his shoulder from the wall… _it must have been agony but he didn’t tremble now….s_ traightening his good arm with the weak one and blinking the sweat from his eyes he fired.

As the man in white fell forward, Andor slumped back against the wall. The gun was still up but he was trembling again now, spent. 

Jyn Erso had flinched sideways at sound of the shot, dropping, ready to fight on even if mortally wounded. ... _Oh, I’ve seen that move before._ _You were trained until it was reflex weren’t you? Onderean.....b_ ut it only lasted a second. Then the woman straightened, looked past the body lying on the platform in front of her to stare at Cassian Andor wide-eyed like a child who sees home again after being lost.

_She thought he was dead. She thought she was alone._

 

He smiled a little. Fighting to breathe steady but still holding the gun high.

Jyn Erso stepped over the fallen body as if it were only a pile of rags and half-ran half-limped to the control panel, to pull down the heavy emergency manual control.

 _Hell…this place had manual backups for everything. Redundancies inside redundancies._

The damn computer even made a noise. A tinny voice could be heard through the wind. “Trans….on…compl…ete.”

Jyn Erso laughed then and limped stiff-legged the few meters toward her wounded savior with a joyous and perfect smile.

  _She looked like a girl of twenty running toward a friend….which was what she was._

It was only when she touched Cassian Andor, actually put her hands on his shaking arms that he finally seemed able to lower the gun and as he did so her eye was drawn back toward the body on the platform. 

 _A name came to her.  ..._ _Orson Krennic, Director of Weapons Research, one of Tarkin’s errand boys. Try as she might Leia couldn’t remember anything else about him. His file had never been tagged as important._

 Erso started to move toward the fallen man with a look of hatred so pure it had to be personal.

Andor held her though, slipped his good arm around her shoulders as she turned and used what was left of his strength to pull her back, wincing in pain but keeping her to him with his own weight. 

His eyes looked at her face only. “Jyn. No…Let go.”

He held on, his mouth brushed her hair “Leave it.”  

_Jyn Erso closed her eyes, breathed….and something slipped away…Leia could feel it… a dark tangle of something unknotted and slipped away like smoke._

 

The woman turned her head, looked at him, saw how badly he was hurt and smiled. They both did. What they had come to do was over and they were not alone, they had each other. Slipping under his good arm she took his weight onto her own shoulders. His legs were clearly giving way and so he leaned on her. She was much shorter but he trusted her to carry him.

  _Leia appreciated that, as maybe only another small woman could._

 The blaster slipped from his hand onto the platform. Neither of them seemed to notice.

 “Do you think anyone is listening?” he asked as if curious but knowing it didn’t matter, letting her lead him.

“I do,” she said, proudly, reassuringly, her arm around him. “Someone’s out there.” 

They limped together into the lift. Closed the door.

 

 

 

The sounds of the firefight had faded away and Leia looked up at the blue sky.

_Raddus is receiving the plans and ordering the jump. We came that close. We almost made it._

_I’m sitting in the Tantive….it isn’t here just yet but it will be._

Soon, she knew.

  

“Have you seen enough?” a voice spoke behind her. 

It was different man, dressed in the same clothes that Malbus had worn but a little shorter, younger maybe and with smaller features, shorter hair, no braids.

_ Possibilities for whom it might be seemed somewhat limited  _

 

“Chirrut Imwe?”

 

“Yes, hello, honored lady,” he bowed.

_Something about the way he did it reminded her of Bodhi Rook._

_Below she could see the scattered islands and shore, the buildings and shattered runways, burning trees and hulks of ships in flames, columns of smoke rising in between the still beautiful patches of green and white and the wide turquoise blue sea beyond. All of this would vanish in unspeakable fire soon._

 

“Yes,” she said. “I want to leave.” 

He took her to the lift, which was back in place and empty now. 

 

 _Somewhere on the ground Rogue One is burning._ She thought. _Stordan Tonc is carryingan almost-dying Bodhi Rook to the only ship that will ever make it off the surface of this damn planet, Resistance or Imperial, a locked-down Lambda-class T-4a that Laren Joma will carry her mortally wounded tail-gunner into and hotwire from the ground._  

 _It was a whispered legend. “How could she fire up so fast if it was locked out?” she heard Chandler ask Bey once while they sat on the ground at Rekia, swapping super-pilot-stories, “The Force,” Shara answered with a shrug. Miriam D’Ree said,_ _“I heard they scrambled so fast she didn’t have time to change so she just had her flight suit on over a party dress and was able to get the Haysian wire out of her bra and use that.”“Same thing,” Bey deadpanned. Pilot jokes._

  

 

They took the lift most of the way down but the monk stopped it two levels above the ground floor.

“There is one more thing,” he said, “If you would let me show you. I think about it very often still and would much like to hear your thoughts, if not today then perhaps another time.” 

He led her out onto a viewing balcony at the front of the complex, one that looked onto a flagged open courtyard at the front side of the building. No doubt it had handy for reviewing troops and placing the cocktail tables at receptions.

 

An unusual black folded-wing shuttle was parked directly beneath them.

Her heart almost stopped…. _a stupid and pointless sensation now.._.and for an instant she thought.  _It’s his ship._

 _That’s the one he flew at Takodana…..the one he carried Rey away in. I saw the vids_.

 

A one of a kind command craft, Sakura had said. Visual analysis marked it after the slaughter at Treskal. S'ress concluded it been custom-built for him, Snoke's fearsome apprentice, Kylo Ren...but apparently it hadn't been.  It was just another a stolen idea, unoriginal. 

“Look,” the monk said, “Put aside your own pain if you can for a moment and look.”

 

Something was moving on the ground beside the shuttle.

It was a KX unit…not even a whole one, just part…parts of one, a one-armed torso and head assembly, a couple of extra arms… _all_   _crawling the way Cassian Andor had crawled and with the same kind of need, the same kind of determination._.... dragging themselves toward the ramp of the black shuttle.

 

“It will move the ship soon,” Imwe was saying. “I have watched it go, but I know so little of such things, such kinds of souls, that it still seems marvelous to me .” He pointed toward the shore’s edge. She could see two small figures, dark against the growing light. They had been moving and now stopped as if to sit or lie side-by-side. It seemed to her that a spark of light flickered off of one.

“It will go to them even as the fire reaches the edge and carry them away to where they will re-build themselves new and again.”

 

 

 

 _You must have thought when the transport doors opened and you saw the light it that there was no way out. Of course you did. You were such a cool and practical man when I knew you. You would have accepted the certainty that you and this remarkable woman would die here, forgotten and never know for sure whether you had succeeded or failed._  

 _Profundity died around us and we tried to outrun a monster there was no outrunning._ _When they boarded us I thought of Jyn Erso._

_“What choice do we have?” I told myself as I took a gun and the plans you died for. I got into Engeneering and found an R2 unit._

_The little thing ran toward me as if it knew who I was and was volunteering._

_I thought of you Captain Andor, in that dark room when I had lost everything....before handsome fucking idiots appeared in my cell door and hope flooded back and the whole universe started for me again._

 

 

_But you didn't die here._

_Somewhere there’s a planet full of people as good as Ava and as terrifying as Portia who will call you “allies” which I have no idea what it means but sounds wonderful._

_You will call out to Davits Draven in the dark and warn us at Hoth. Send Bodhi Rook with a plan to save our asses at Endor._

_Spynet probably named a wing after you, not that they’d tell anybody._

_And even though no one listens you will keep sending the message._

_You will live and raise children, one at least with cold stubborn courage and fire in her eye. Oh, she may bite her nails a little but she will still reportedly play Davits Draven to a draw in “spy-on-spy” , call out the infiltration of the New Republic to my face, somehow make the sharpest pilot since Han Solo blush just a little every time he says her name, and just generally tell the First Order to go fuck themselves._

 

 

“You know what our dear Jyn wears?” Churrit Imwe asked her. She realized now they were not alone on the balcony anymore, Baze Malbus had joined them to put his arm around the other monk’s shoulder

“Her necklace,” the monk answered his own question with a smile.

The dark shuttle lifted now and moved away as the light began to grow, cruel and blinding. “The Great Temple was lost but one tiny scrap of kyber taken from within her heart ages ago found it’s way not into a sword or a weapon but into the handof desperate child. Carved on it...and you must trust me when I tell you that only kyber of equal strength can carve kyber...in a language she cannot read even now are the words “Trust the Force.”

 

“Come now, you always do this when you think you have figured something out,” Malbus said. “You are giving this poor woman too much to think about at one time. Let’s go. I have seen this part of the story once and that was more than enough.”

 

He took Imwe’s hand in one of his and hers in the other and led them both away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. The continuing adventures of Force ghost Leia is crazy-pants but the centrality to the Star Wars U of the Battle of Scarif in general and of Jyn/Cassian/Kay in the tower in particular is a hill I will die on.


	41. A Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kes Dameron reaches Ea, exhausted, and tries to get some rest unravelling the pieces of his day as he always does, by telling his wife about them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small and angsty exercise because the conceit of a man talking to his beloved late wife about his fears and worries for their son in a war against a resurgent enemy he sacrificed his youth to defeat, and his lost dog ...is not gonna be lighthearted. On the other hand, Ava and going through Bodhi's sock drawer.
> 
> Te extraño = I miss you.
> 
> la vieja estación familiar = family station life
> 
> hermosa chica = beautiful girl

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's actually a decent billet here, babe.

The bed is comfy, the food’s been good so far and there's a place to store my gear.

What more can a soldier ask for?

 

I’ll be bunking in with Rook, at least short term. He's got a couple of nice rooms up over their workshop here.

Sarge made a very kind offer about letting me stay down in their house to start but I had to give that a negative.

She's going to want time with her daughter while she can get it.

I've got the room to myself for now.

Rook and Major Andoraren’t here but they should be back tomorrow or early the next day. Sarge says they had to walk out to a settlement south of here on business but they’ve already gotten word and are hightailing it in, her words. 

It seems that what little mechanical transport people have around here is limited to the coastal plains and they don't dare build much more in case somebody should ever compare scans of energy signatures and mark this place down as escalating its tech.

There's only one damn ship of any kind on the whole planet and they keep it hidden... _two now that Kayly is back with her shuttle._...flight black-outs are also frequent it and so we're grounded for the moment.

 

It's not that I'm going through his stuff or anything either but, bless him Rook still folds his socks military style. Folded both together, flattened and rolled one inside the other, with the outer cuff wrapped around both.

_I don’t know why but it made me laugh. Remember how you used to go through my drawer and unroll my socks?_

 

I hope everyone is alright on La'hmu. I think they’ll be ok once they get that greenhouse together. Those kids are tough.

 

_Remember how you told everybody who ever asked that if it was up to you you'd never sleep anywhere but Yavin IV again ever and I always said never cared where I slept again as long as it was with you?_

 

Te extraño. It never stops being true.

 

Choices aren't really in abundance right now.That's what war does right?It narrows your options down, sometimes to the only thing you can do. Who knows that better than us?

 

 

 

Hey, remember when we were setting up on Hoth? They gave out the team data packets about conditions and somebody.... _Fisk I think was_...said "Hell, has anybody ever actually been to this place?" and Solo says "I have." Probably it had been some kind of smugglers last option depot. So Die Perek asks him "Bottom line, one sentence, what's it like?" Solo just shrugs and tells her "The whole fucking planet is going to try to kill you 24/7."

No lie, eh?

 

_It isn't like that here Shara._

_This Ea seems like one of those planets like Takodan, Bessar, even Endor. The kind Syndulla said, with a wide range of ecosystem menu options and a sign at the door that said, "Be nice meat-people, don’t break anything and maybe we can fit you in somewhere when a table opens."_

 

It's like home in some ways but it doesn’t sure have that beautiful light. The sun's a polite little G2V and of course the planetary solar orbit means nights are going to be longish and darkish. I’m out of the habit of that so it's going to take a little adjustment.

It's funny, Ava realized that so she brought me a tiny lamp because she was "worried about my eyes.” The poor thing actually cried when I told about leaving Loco with the kids, hell….allright, I’ll tell the truth, I cried too.

Maybe that's why I'm having trouble setting down tonight babe.

 

Force, I miss that damned dog.

 

We beat the planet-killer. Again.

Poe fired the shot, our boy did that. You taught him to fly and he did that.

_But once the Deathstar was gone it was the endless destroyers that wore us down, you said it yourself.... Mid-Rim, Hoth… the big guns picked us off one ship, one world, one hero at a time._

 

And now the sons of bitches can track in FTL. I don't know what they use to do it but it's how they got the jump on old Ackbar and wiped out the Resistance fleet. 

_How do we beat that?If we can't run how do we hide?_

 

From what young Andor tells me they've figured out ways to baffle tracking ship by ship but it only works for small ships or freighters with high fuel efficiency.

Keeping this location dark is vital so the drill is to fly,park for long stretches, home-scanned, wait, repeat, over and over and over. _You’d go nuts its way past boring._

Their Flight Control here brings you in then in her own sweet time on whatever track is calculated to confuse distance scanning into thinking you are debris.

 

_Flight Control is an AI named “Portia" by the way and yeah that is probably going to turn out to be as weird as it sounds_

 

I just hope I didn't snore the way I used to when I dozed off sitting in the co-pilot recliner seat in the A-wing.

_Remember how you used to give me a hard time about it? Poe still does._

 

I woke up at one point between the jumps and asked Kayly "where are we?"

"P-13, fairly close to the outside orbit of Jakku," she said, as if that wasn’t a scary thing to say, and for her maybe it wasn’t.

_I have to tell you it gave me a chill._

 

Later again while we were drinking caf and waiting out the downtime I asked what this place was going to be like. She must have thought at first that I meant planetary designation and said class M,88% water with the one major land mass and all of that but I told her no, like a good Pathfinder grunt what I needed described first were the conditions at landing site, what was the ground was going to be like when our boots hit it and what would we notice first thing, as soon as the hatch opened.

 

_I swear, Shara as soon as I said it I wished I hadn't. I don't think anybody can have ever asked her anything like that before._

 

"Oh," she looked so surprised, "unless conditions are weird she'll probably just bring us in on the lower field at home."

 

_I didn't understand then but "home" literally meant home. We landed about less than 3 k from her parents house._

 

Then she started giving me details about how the village is called Nexa, it's in a temperate upland region, and there are freshwater streams….which she names....and how they run down into some grasslands to a river, Green River she called it. There arespring-fed ponds too that the locals swim in. There’s mixed vegetation, conifer trees, some deciduous hardwoods, wind and insect pollinated grass and flowers in meadows and she made sure to tell me that it’s early summer here now and that’s a great time for weather. Then she stated to talk about how on hot days you can smell the cones on the trees as they get warm and how limes and rosemary kind of reminded her of that smell and so maybe they would smell like that to me, and about how fields are full of flowering grasses in fall and some have little purple and yellow star-shaped flowers and how in the winter it snows but not as heavy as it does in the higher elevations.

 

_Hermosa chica you should have seen her face. Damn near broke my heart._

Polished contact operative one minute, homesick kid the next. It reminded me of too many damn people.

 

 

After one last short jump into FTL we finally dropped down on an angle so steep I couldn’t blink for thirty seconds of it.

 

"Punching a hole" she called it.

Poor kid apologized over and over.

Y _ou’d have laughed your ass off._

 

There was heavy cloud cover and we were chasing along the ground butwhen we first broke atmo I saw some ocean.

_If I'm here for long I'll have to check that out._

We toucheddown in a field by a little low-tech town and some stone ruins just as the sun came out at our backs.

 

Young Kayly cracked the cockpit hatch and damned if she wasn’t right,it did smell like wet rosemary.It’s good air.

Standing right there, just a few meters off,was a human woman in a blue jacket and one of the furry locals, jumping up and down and waving.

 

_That was Ava, the one who came to the house with Poe, and was scared of Loco at first. She’s such a sweetheart._

 

But the woman, I swear I would have recognized her anywhere, even though it's been thirty years and the last time I saw her she was flat out on a cot in a field hospital with a heme line in her arm. Other than a little grey on the front fringes and a few freckles and some sun lines around the eyes she looked not all that different from when she popped out from behind that rock on Endor like a cat and scared the fuck out of Berman.

 

The girl has her mama's eyes that's for sure.

 

Kayly climbed straight over the cockpit edge, jumped three meters down and ran straight to her mom.

 

Maybe I could have jumped it but I don't have that many more dramatic entrances left in me so I'm pacing myself. I made an old mans exit out the side hatch.

Besides, you got to give people a few minutes. Does an Intelligence officer actually want somebody to see her crying in her mama's arms?

 

Ava actually came inside to get me, "Mr. Kes Dameron," she says "is that you?"

_All humans look the same to the locals basically. Three people have called me "Bodhi Rook"already and it's just the first day._

 

I walked out holding her hand and call out, "Hey Sargent Hallick,” to the woman

Jyn Erso gives me a big damn hug while her daughter stood and smiled.

Eventually we get ourselves together, grab the light gear and walk up a dirt road through some meadows to their house.

 

 _It's a little grey stone cottagey place with a crazy-quilt garden around. I may just be a self-taught agriculturalist but I defy any Agcom ES-T3 to tell you what they are even trying to grow._ _I swear, the soil must be gold here because it's like somebody just cut up random packets of seeds and threw them everywhere._

 

"Portia wants us to come up to the tower and make introductions," Kayly said.

"Unless it's an emergency Portia should relax and let the poor guy acclimate for a day," Jyn Erso tells her. “It’s a lot to take in.”

So we played catch-up and stuck around the house, which might have seemed a little pretty rustic to you babe, but I grew up on Sullest so once I found out they’ve got a hot water cistern I was better than fine.

 

Eventually we went out to unload the shuttle.

I got introduced to a lot of furry people, most of them with very firm handshakes. The one I remember best had pure white fur and little glasses.

 

We drank a beer out of little clay cups, then ate some good cold soup.

Kind of spicy and I think there were peaches in it. Sargant Erso passed around a basket of stale bread to break up in it just like my mama used to do.

It seemed like it was still early but I told her I was dead tired and just needed a place to sleep. _Which was absolute truth, babe._

 

“You don’t have to stay at Bodhi’s alone,” Kayly said, “We can put you in my brother’s old bunk here.”

She was desperate to be with alone her mom and desperate not to be.

 

Five months since she'd been home she said, five months out there alone, or mostly alone, in the dark. Hiding from the First Order and counting which of her friends were dead and which were alive.She can't stay. She told me that in the ship. She can come home to keep her promise to Poe, to debrief and get intel maybe but then has to go back out into it again. What must it be like?

 

_We went to war and we mostly didn't come home ’til it was over._

_My Pop had kept us safe a long as he could and I grew up happy there. I loved my cousins and la vieja estación familiar but life was so hard on Sullest. I know now that we were dirt poor and afterwards when everybody was gone, there was nothing for me there. We talked about it for days while we were waiting for those damned decommission papers to come through, about where we would go and what it might be like staying on with your folks. Six months we managed on Namadii, while Poe...oh Force, while our little boy learned who we were again....and then we signed up for the Veterans Resettlement Grant and came back to Yavin IV._

_Crissy cried when you said that we were going. It was the city, the crowds, the politics, everything was too much. We needed help, you told them, all three of us needed help, and there were better veteran support services on Yavin._

_We fought to make a new galaxy, for Poe, for us and we wanted to go live in it._

_Your Dad understood and he brought her around later. They came and stayed with us a lot those first years._

 

_They're ok I think. Your stepbrother has had them with him on Ferron since the Remnant party took over in the Namadii Council ten years back. I wonder what their old neighbors think now about the “chaos” and “deadlocked inefficiency” of the New Republic? I wonder if any of them had family or friends in the Hosnian System?_

_Force help us your Dad may not even be able to take it in what's happened and maybe that's a mercy._

_The last time I talked to them was right before the attack and he looked good but when I signed off he asked how Poe was doing with starting school and told me to tell you he loved you._

 

 

 

 _“He’s still himself”_ she said about Poe, like she knew that was what I needed most to hear.

 

 

Tomorrow Rook and the Major should be back and I’lll get to "meet" the AI, She’s in a dinged up grey stone tower by the way, on the far other end of the landing pasture. I gotta say "pasture" rather than "field" because there were actual sheep-looking animals at the far end.

_Rustic is a word I’m using a lot._

When I asked if that was where Portia was centrally accessed.Kayly coughed, Erso rolled her eyes and Ava gives me a big smile and tells me, "Ancient Portia doesn't live in the tower. She is the tower."

 

 

I already talked to this “Portia” on the shuttle I think, but only as the nav-computer standard audio voice.

 

[“Commander Poe Dameron is a good person”] she said, which was a very strange thing to hear coming out of a nav computer, I can tell you, [‘He is still under profound stress but it may reassure you to know that his general health is excellent and he is recovering impressively well from the injuries and shock of events surrounding the attack. I was able to do limited biological scans and Kayly had a period of prolonged contact with him, shortly thereafter …”]

 

The girl jumped right in then and kind of cut her off. She told me that although Poe was hurt in the course of the Starkiller assault he's physically alright now…..or was two weeks ago so I’m holding on to that.

 

 _He's a strong man, baby. He's like you._  

_And for some reason machines like him, they always have._

 

I don’t think much gets past young Kayly when she’s watching.

She gave my hand a squeeze, “He’s been through hell but he’s still fighting and he’s still himself.”

 

_That was good to hear._

 

I’m trying to be a tough guy here because our boy survived against all the Force's odds and what the hell good is it going to do him if I fall apart?

I need her to tell him not to worry about me.  He is worried enough to have sent them to find me and take me somewhere "safe."  Once the bastards get past taking it out on the landmarks of the Alliance and the Republic the worry is that they are going after people surgically wherever they can reach.

 

 _Even a Flight Commander’s dad?_ I wanted to ask, _do they really have the manpower to take it that far down the chain?_  

Except he’s not that far down the chain now is he babe?

He fired the damn shot and maybe they know that or maybe they don’t but this is about more than Black Squadron. 

It sure as hell is now, but maybe it was even before the attack.

There seemed to be a weight on him and a lot he wouldn’t talk to me about.

 

_"I've gotta keep it in separate boxes Pop,"_

_I thought he meant needing me not to come up to the base, because, you know, discipline which I understood,….but now I think maybe he meant something more._

 

The Princess could always spot the talent couldn’t she?

 

Remember when Crix Mandine stood up there beside Reikken and read out the mission assignments before Endor?

In the back D'Lara said “General? He looks way too young for this shit," and Perek said, "We all look too young for this shit."

 

But we’d lost so many at Scarif, then Hoth.

Now Han’s dead. Ackbar's dead. Luke’s dead. The Fleet is gone.

 

There can’t be many left in Command. This girl is running Field Intelligence and she barely looks old enough to work in a bar.

 

 

_He asked me that night he came to tell me about what he’d seen on the UR Edge, about the First Order and the Resistance and why he was deserting his commission. He asked about the war and what it was like when I left home and joined the Alliance. ”Were you scared?" he asked._

_Yeah beautiful boy, I thought. That day and every day after for six years._

_It was shadows to the scared I am now._

_Now I’m scared it was all for nothing._

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can't talk to Poe now, that’s pretty clear. Kayly says they're setting up secure lines to pass information but right now they can't risk anything real time.

 

 

It’s kind of lonely up here without the dog on my feet,just to be honest with you babe but I’ll make it.

 

_Rogue One, fucking Force can you believe it?….and I thought OUR motto was “First in, Last out”?_

_Tonc said the squad had a damned hand signal.Maybe I can get Rook to teach it to me._

 

I’ll find out more tomorrow. 

 

Thanks for the ear, hermosa…. I think I can get some sleep now.

Take care of him. He’s out there with you somewhere.

I love you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of an unconsidered series of people lying in bed thinking. I have a little bit called "The Bunk" set aboard the Falcon Post-Crait that I thought of putting in here but it proved to self-containedly Rose Tico-centric that I put it out as a one-shot on it's own, but it could go in here somewhere too.


	42. The Extraction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doren Tonc formerly an Emergency Medical Responder on Qema 7 is now a soldier of the New Resistance. He answers a call to rescue two unidentified elderly veterans who prove a little on the tricky side. Davits Draven, former General of the Rebel Alliance is asked whether he still has strength for the fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nel coraggio c'è speranza = There is hope in courage

 

 

 

 

 

Doren Tonc been a certified MTFRM, Multi-Terrestrial Field Rescue Medic, once upon a time, but now that seemed like a different universe.  
Getting cleared for the New Republic Rescue and Medical Transport Services, NeRRMs to their friends, meant among other things passing tests on how to link up with dozens of disparate planetary set-ups, plus how to use and field adapt different types of comm equipment.... _everything up to and including of two cups and a string was up for grabs, as Den, his trainer on HP used to say._ It wasn't enough just to virtually match spec and models either, you had to show you could make it work under every conceivable type of field conditions.

_Den Carrello, Twi'lek male, tall, nerves of steel, handshake like a wookie, a relentless punster and serial dater who ate unconsciousable junk food and never gained an ounce. He had a fat blue Tooka cat named Boris he dressed up in outfits and shared funny vid holos of unless you blocked him, which everybody but Tonc did. Deron always used the excuse that the vids were great for keeping little kids calm on ambulance rides. He'd have done it anyway though, he was a sucker for a cute animal._

_You always felt like you had to give the mini-biography of everyone who was gone every time you mentioned a name, as if that somehow would make them a little more not-vanished. Crazy. You couldn't, right?...five billion people._  
_Everybody did it though._  
_He wondered what people said about his brother._

  
He thought of Carello and his "two cans and a string" every time he got a message from LQ2. The Mon Calmari Resistance was in contact with a Rebel cell doing surveillance on the FO, as well as coordinating between groups and doing the old cyber-sabotage. Who were hey? Where were they? The Mon Calmari called them LQ2 and trusted the guy/guys whole-heartedly and that was good enough for him.   
Still and all it was wild. A multi-pass reader at the transit station might tell you that you owed 00.75 C....and that your contact was standing by the door and a fuel shipment was in. The complementary caf machine in a hostel lobby would ask if you wanted sweetener in your latte then tell you that two Mon Calmari refugees were hiding in the basement of a nearby restaurant and needed medical help and evacuation. It got over being disorienting with repetition but it sure stayed spooky.

This time it had been a damned vending machine.  
On Testia Station he and Fargo had just finished closing the containers of "empty" fuel canisters and watched them lift off to dock with the recycling tug that was not going to recycle them at all but would use a doctored flight plan to get them to a shielded freighter that would off load them to a hidden depot. He hated this smuggling shit more than tongue could tell but Fargo always did most of the talking, Deron's job mostly to grunt condescendingly and put a human face on the operation. The Bothan slapped his shoulder after as they split up at the transit station. "You made it, see, not so hard was it?"  
_Easy for you to say Fargo, you don't sweat._  
They always needed to leave separately so after his partner took off Tonc went alone to the Subpro employee refreshment kiosk....third one from the left, like he'd been told to.  
The menu panel lit up, listed the comp drinks then started talking. What came through this time though wasn't his return instructions from Markor. He was getting direct orders from LQ2 them/itself.

 **[Deron Tonc. We need you to do an extraction for us on Pendarr. There will be a shuttle ready for you at the pick-up. Instructions will follow.** ]

_No. No. No. Son of a bitch. Alone? What the hell did "extraction" mean this time? Last time he "extracted" it had been an injured Mandellorian from a prison transport and there'd been shooting. Were there going to be guns? He hated guns._

Doren keyed to change his drink request from cold mineral water to a beer but caffeinated sweet tonic dropped out instead.  
He'd learned a while back that LQ2 had a sense of humor.

 

 

 

 

In the end he'd only even made it off Quema 7 at all because his mother gave him a slip of paper film with a word on it, "profondità."

She wouldn't come with him. Deron had known even as he drove over there that she would never leave George and Kathy, knew she'd say exactly what she had said which was, "I'd slow you down" but he'd had to ask, had to tell her he was going....even though then he hadn't been 100% sure where.  
  
She knew the worst. The universal broadcasts had gone out hours before.  
_Don't say it,_ he'd told himself, what point was there in saying it aloud?  
But the instant the door opened he'd seen her standing there he’d blurted out, "Timmy's gone, Mom. He's gone," and she held onto him like he was a little kid again, like he was the one who needed comfort.

His mother hadn't tried to make him stay, or wait until they knew more details about what was happening or any of that shit, and she hadn't panicked or said, "You're all I have left," ....which was good because that was what he'd been most scared of. He still didn't know how he'd have braced himself against that one.

_His uncle hadn't said goodbye to anybody and it still messed up her head all these years later, Deron knew. Every time he or Tim left the house when they were little, whether for school, play dates, camping trips, even after visits when they were grown, she had squeezed them embarrassingly too long every time and said, "I love you. I love you. Goodbye." A tough kid's worst nightmare right?_

This time she had only wiped his tears with her sleeve, kissed him  "Go now. Hurry," and given him the paper.  
"I love you. I love you. Goodbye," he'd said.

He drove as fast as he could to the main space port. As traffic became more and more impassible he started punching up alternate mapping. Suddenly the chipper Modcom civil-defense voice they called "Maud," the one built into every NeRRM share-car stopped talking about shelter warnings and impassable access roads and said, [Are you trying to leave Qema 7, Deron Tonc-Levon?"]

 _Fuck yes._ "Yes."

["Do you know what ship you are trying to reach ?"]

The commercial flight schedules had all been wiped from the public boards, probably to impede their being used by bad guys later to track evacuating ships.

_Force. Q-com must preparing for the worst._

"A Mon Cala ship....are there any?"

[".....maybe....four small commercial craft and a private diplomatic shuttle were logged but they have cloaked their signatures and will be escaping as quickly as they can get their people on....you will have to hurry......turn left and drive onto the ramp, use the surface access to the Dyrantech container warehouse and then cut through that to the lower level and use the employee parking access rail....security gates are unlocked and you should be able to get on the outgoing line and use it to go in. If you are quick you will be able to reach the emergency access lifts...the droids are letting people through for now although that could change at any moment. If you are blocked abandon the vehicle and try to get up to the platforms on foot....good luck .."]

_It wasn't until long afterward that it occurred to him, Maud had never said "maybe" before and she had certainly never said "good luck."_

Captain Markor had been striding quickly with two others, hooded ponchos thrown over their rounded figures... _not much of a disguise really but, you know, duress_....across the chaos of the tarmac.  
He pushed forward and grabbed a pressure-suited arm.  
"Sir! Wait..I need to ...!" He'd shouted over the roar of ships engines. Small ones were lifting right up from the cargo platforms in front of them, barely a hundred meters away. The Mon Calmari officer seemed to turn very quickly and a blaster was suddenly shoved against Deron's ribs.  
"No.... " he'd gasped, "just take me with you, please..."  
Markor's large eyes blinked, "I cannot, young man..."  
He waved to the others to keep going and started to turn away, "That risk is not mine to take, I am sorry."  
People and loader droids continued to move around them in a stream toward the rows of waiting ships.  
"Profondità," Deron said, praying he was pronouncing it right.  
The Mon Calmari stopped dead. Their expressions were hard to read but golden eyes turned to focus sharply on him. "Nel coraggio c'è speranza. Who are you?" The captain said.

"Deron Tonc. My..." he began, but he did not need to finish, the blaster had vanished and a salmon-colored hand held his arm.

"Come!" Markor said pulling him eagerly, "hurry, this is the last ship."

The Radiant escaped into light speed just as two First Order destroyers dropped into the Qema system.

  
After that the months had passed quickly..... _well, at least the weeks did, nights got long sometimes_....but that was all good because more time to think or worry would have probably wrecked him.

 

Since the First Order had issued a bounty for any and all Mon Calmari they were in danger of arrest in the Core or kidnapping pretty much anywhere. Deron Tonc and the handful of humans and others in the Mon Cala Resistance were valuable assets, able to travel freely. On top of straight up smuggling, a Resistance cyber-cell that Markor and General Alekka identified as only as LQ2 started coordinating, setting up purchases of fuel and parts using he and the other non-Mon-Calmari as sraw-buyers with faked docs. It scared the hell out of him but he did it. He knew what the supplies were for.  
Though Mon Cala was still under brutal siege a secret fleet was being assembled in hidden ship yards in far-flung asteroid fields in a dozen systems, all being rebuilt for war.  
His medical skills were also being put to use helping hidden and often ill refugees escape from wherever they had found shelter and to safer worlds on the Outer Rim.

" _It's ok. We're with the Resistance," he had told a group of bruised, dehydrated and frightened Mon Calmari just two weeks ago. Mostly university students, they had been stuck on a Corellian manufacturing ring, hidden in the kitchens by the hotel staff, almost since the attack. One middle-aged female, in obvious pain from capillary micro-ruptures after weeks in a failed pressure suit, refused to get into the stasis containers he had rigged to smuggle them out until the last of her students were safely wrapped. "What is your name young man?" she rasped as he helped her into the tube. "Doren Tonc," he said, adding because he had learned by then that any Mon Calmari older than a tad would recognize the name and ask, "Stordan Tonc was my mother's brother." The mottled green hand pressed his with surprising firmness, "Then the Force willed our paths to cross," she coughed and whispered, "Raddus was my sire."_

 

 

 

When he reached Pendarr he was waived through sky security at every stop with docs that showed him to be some kind of bank assessor named "Aaron." When he made it to the North continent and a University of Pendarr Biological Research Reservation, he found that they had changed and he was now an arborist named "Ashokan." He really hoped that nobody asked him any questions because he had no fucking idea what an arborist did. A cargo speeder was reserved in his name and he followed the directions in it into a huge forest preserve, then manually disabled the vehicle tracking a few k from the Rangers station and drove on for a few hours. As instructed he parked it at a trail head and hiked up a steep access road as soon as it was light.  
The hand-held unit had a trail map and told him to bring his medical kit. He would be bringing out two elderly humans, it said.  
Doren typed...

.... _are injuries presumed? If so what kind?_......

[..NO INJURIES AT LAST CONTACT BUT SUBJECTS ARE OF RELATIVELY ADVANCED AGE AND HAVE BEEN IN HIDING FOR SIX MONTHS UNDER STRENUOUS CONDITIONS..APPROACH WITH SOME CAUTION...]

.... _Are we talking trauma?...mental instability_?...

[..SOME DEGREE POSSIBLE...THEY HAVE BEEN ALERTED AS TO EVACUATION PROCEDURE BUT BE AWARE ONE SUBJECT IS FORMER INTELLIGENCE ...]

" _Intelligence" like what? Oh shit. Am I out here fucking alone trying to rescue elderly spies?_

He had reached a small prefab building with shuttered awnings and solar panels on the roof dusted with leaves.

A slim human was sitting on a fallen log by the side door, bundled up in a brown thermal jacket with the hood thrown back. They had short silver hair and an alert, if weary expression.

"Hello," the person said, "Are you with the Resistance?"  
"Yes," Doren answered, slinging off his med-pack as he moved closer. He could see a steel folding cane propped againstthe log within reach.  "I'm here to get you out of this place. Are you injured? Is your companion close by?"

They gestured toward the cane, "I have impaired use of my left knee. Progressive arthritis in the regrown joint.....clearly should have gotten it dealt with last year...but he's healthier than a wicked old fool has any right to be."

Doren felt the blaster muzzle at his back at the same moment the hand clamped down on his shoulder.

"Stay calm son," a steady voice said near his ear, "Just lower that bag very slowly and tell me your name."  
_Fucking hell._

"Doren Tonc," he said.

The person on the log was standing slowly, shaking their head, "I apologize," they said, "He's like this when he's stressed."

 

_________________________

 

 

The young man, Stordan Tonc's nephew, had been given means and instructions to find them, get them off-world safely and wait at a determined set of coordinates for further instructions on where to go next. He couldn't or wouldn't tell them much more.

After they left the Pendarr system Thorn had been far too restless for lying on a bunk also after pacing and scolding for a few minutes had gingerly climbed up front to sit in the cockpit with the young Resistance soldier.  
Doren Tonc turned out to have been an EMT at some point and having recognized Ty Thorn as the author of half his textbooks was now all but begging for an autograph. They began chatting about the merits of bio-glues as opposed to stitching to stop emergency bleeding among exoskeletal species.

The Force couldn't have given Thorn a better gift right now, so Draven moved back to the seating area in the rear bay.

He took a seat and leaned back, tried to breathe.

 

When the voice came out of the speaker on the wall beside his head it sounded like standard factory-issued comm audio, Basic in an unobtrusive, clearly enunciated Corellian accent, pitched at a low female/higher male range.

Draven knew full well it wasn't the ship's computer talking to him.

["Where do you want to go General Draven?"]  
"Is this Portia?"  
["Yes."]  
He didn't bother to ask what his options were. She wasn't asking about specific locations, she knew those and he didn't. She was asking what he wanted to do.  
"Can this boy take me to General Organa?"  
_He felt sure that if she were dead it would have been broadcast everywhere. The First Order would have made sure of it._

  
["No. Leia Organa is not accessible at present. A core of Resistance Command has survived but they are split and in motion."]  
_Of course they were._  
He felt cold suddenly.  
["Oh heavens. Relaying messages like this is annoying and inefficient. Do you have access to an individual data screen?"]

He looked around, there was one docked over his head.  
"Yes."

["Use that then. I will interject on audio if necessary." ]  
Draven pulled the pad down and booted it.

Text lit up on the surface.

... They are executing a Haven protocol and an adapted version of Firestorm. Leia Organa is contacting only through secure drops **.** _..._

Andor. Thirty years. He'd be roughly 57 now, maybe 58.

.....General as you know we need clearance assessment before you can be debriefed and given field data.....

He'd retired twenty five years ago with all clearance removed, add to that he was eighty one and had basically been living in the woods and on power bars for the last six months.  
_A failed soldier from an army whose brave victory had now burned to ashes because they blindly, stupidly, let their enemy escape, regroup, and return to slaughter worlds again. I'd think twice before letting me back in._  
_Hell, I probably wouldn't._

He typed back.  
**_Understood_**.

 _Organa herself would make the call, presumably. How long would it get in contact with her? Did any of her Intelligence people survive? Sakura had dropped out of sight when the Resistance formed, Draven remembered a promising intern who'd grown up around  smuggler communities on the Outer Rim. Aerin had tapped him for.._..

_**Who will assess?** _

... **.** I will....

So Sakura hadn't made it. 

 

Draven remembered the combat-bruised young soldier he'd interviewed in the belly of that transport ship after Endor. A spy whose self-assessment of his last mission before deserting had been to say simply "I broke."

 

_I'm sorry, Andor._

**_Are you senior Resistance Intelligence?_ **

..... Command structure is lateral chain.....I am current acting head of Analysis **....**

_Lateral chain? What did that mean? Organa never did a lateral chain of anything in her life unless she was at one end of it and pulling._

The ships voice spoke

["Cassian is being either modest or circumspect, although I don't know why. He is certainly the person taking the lead as it regards interactions with your people. As I made clear to Leia Organa. I am a soldier of our regional Alliance and have given my word to act as an active ally of your Rebellion and your Republic, in all actions against our mutual Enemy. Honestly though, I'm only a building, it would be silly in the extreme to talk about rank and such."]

_Andor, just please someday tell me who or what this thing is._

 

_Wait."Lateral" in Firestorm meant team command structure. It was instituted when you had five survivors or less in any......oh Force._

**_How many in Analysis?_ **

... two, or three if we count Portia....

["nonsense. I've already said I don't want to be counted. If it makes things easier for you to process consider me a technical operational consultant and communications coordinator."]

 _Two, he'd said...Andor wasn't entirely alone then. She was still alive and still with him._  
Thirty years ago on that transport he had made it clear that he no longer felt himself capable of functioning alone.

  
**_And what does Sargent Erso say?_ **

.... she's abstaining on this particular security assessment....

 _Yes. I'm sure she is._  
He laughed out loud then and Thorn and the young man in the cockpit, Doren Tonc, stopped talking, no doubt wondering what was going on back here.

  
Davits Draven flexed his fingers slowly because he only realized now that he'd been clenching them.  
_This boy, Stordan Tonc's nephew, had talked about getting orders. Operations were running._  
_Firestorm. Dear fucking Force._ _Where was Organa? Ackbar?_  
  
**_Do you have Tactical?_**

.... I need an assessment first General....present status and proposed recommendations for conditions of deployment **...**

["If you are considering issues regarding your health I should tell you that I have already given Cassian a summary of your physical condition General Draven, based on Doren's skilled if unavoidably limited scans. In case you are wondering, other than being slightly dehydrated and mild arthritic impairment in your left shoulder consistent with injuries suffered in early adulthood you are in excellent health for your species and age...]

Andor was asking him to assess his own capability for duty _._

It was difficult to stop himself from laughing again.

[..Your companion is suffering from far more extensive impairment due to some inexcusably poor attempt to replace a knee and hip joint, elevated stress hormones consistent with extended chronic pain and elevated blood pressure but all of these are treatable and significantly if not wholly reversible."]

 _I need Thorn to be as safe as is possible..but "safe" is relative._ _Thorn won't stay quiet or play dead, anyway. I know better than that ....you probably remember the dear doctor well enough to know it too._

_**As your consultant has reported I am of limited use in field. All my tactical data is 25 years out of date, but as nearly as I can tell my brain still works. Deploy me as needed. While I'm alive I'll fight.** _

_My family had a saying about it, in fact._

....  Understood. Lighthouse still stands. A version of Firestorm is being implemented but this is not our war this is different. General Organa has been contacted. All other Senior Resistance Command killed. Skywalker reported dead. Resistance Fleet destroyed. Organa is in motion and currently out of contact, Kaylyra is Tactical......

_His daughter. Oh Force forgive us all. Please let him not be running his own child._

.....M oving you presently to Veir III to meet with the Mon Cala Resistance and some surviving representatives of the Senate. You will be updated and receive orders there.....Talk to Dr. Thorn....Get some rest while you can General Draven. **....**

The screen went blank.

 

 

 


	43. LQ2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaydel Ko Connix, Resistance Officer in of the Battle of D’Qar, the destruction of the Raddus and the Battle of Crait remembers how she learned the truth behind many tragic events that haunt her and about the survival of an old acquaintance from Yavin Base. She also recalls her friend Poe Dameron’s report to Leia Organa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So small. More POVs! More exposition! Sorry.  
> OTBS - Connix, cute, blonde and slightly bitter will hopefully kick ass and take names in the next movie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"You know her?" Javos asked peering in the glass window that looked down into the makeshift medbay, “Poe’s mystery lady?” 

 

_Poe Dameron had hovered in medbay until the droid chased him out and then he had hovered up on the catwalk observation platform until a few minutes ago. Seeing a breathing tube removed was a little too much for him it seemed._

_“Connie, I need to check with Sheridan before she goes. Send somebody for me when she wakes up,” he’d said, exactly as he had to Mellie about four times._

 

“She’s not a mystery exactly. I knew her on Yavin," Kaydel Ko Connix said, "she was a pilot then."

"The hell you say?” her friend peered over the railing. 

The young woman was not in the tank anymore at least. Mellie had lifted her out and now she was on a regular cot under a blue light monitor, from collarbone to ankles, still pale, still out cold, but breathing.

  

"Not a Resistance pilot, at least not in my time."

“She was in the first cadre," Connix told her, "the ones Joma and Wexley trained up in pre-fab box classrooms on decommissioned T-65Bs before the evac to D’Qar."

 

 

_When they were finally reunited with the missing pilots Dameron had taken it on himself to debrief them, to not only to sit beside D'Acy and Leia and unflinchingly outline what had happened…._

_"In a luckier universe she'd have shot me for mutiny and there mightbe more of us here, but that's not the way it went...."_

_but also afterwards to bring each of them aside privately, one by one, to go over the long lists of the casualties, so they'd know among family and friends...who not to hold out hope for._

_The Falcon had such damned thin interior walls._

_She had heard a bang from the deck and, startled, looked around the hatch to see Wexley and Poe standing atthe top of the ramp, the sound had been Wexley punching the bulkhead wall. “_

_Polly Norven..." the pilot was was saying, "She was good...damn good."_

_"I know, Dameron said quietly._

_"It must sound so stupid, so damned selfish..but..." Wexley stood with his hand against the wall and laughed bitterly, ".... that's our whole little fighter school Poe, ...our first class....she was the last one."_

_Dameron had had a hand on his shoulder, head down, "No, Snap," she'd heard him say, "there's one left."_

 

 

 

"They told us she died in an FTL glitch on the first jump to D'Qar but apparently that was a cover. That's Cadet Private Kaylyra Andor, aka LQ2, aka Resistance Intelligence, aka Rogue One."

Suralinda Javos had been top of her academic class at the Flight Academy and a journalist after, so she knew her textbook "History of the Galactic Civil War.

She looked down, confused. 

"You mean Rogue Squadron?"

The woman on the med table, damp dark hair spread around a pale bruised face, was twenty five or six maybe.

"That's nuts she can't have been on ..." 

"No," Kaydel Ko Connix said, " I mean Rogue One...THE Rogue One."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

_When they'd gotten back from what Finn to this day insisted on calling "the bank job," Dameron had run straight to the General._

 

From the Falcon they had checked off the satellite as arranged

[..Mission success...]

The maniac then leaned right over her to snap the comm open. 

"Leia. Are you there? Leia...she's alive."

 

There had been a pause.

 

["....Connix, PLEASE tell me this is cloaked..."] the General's voice, exasperated.

_It was. Baffled three ways in fact...as one would fucking hope Dameron knew._

"Yes, ma'am."

 

["...who's alive?..."]

 

"Leia, Lighthouse is operational....I saw Andor,..."

 

["...stop it right there Poe....get in here...oh, thank the Force...  don't do this over comm though...get in here...]

 

They were thirty minutes out.

"What's this about Poe?" she asked him.

“It’s about us not being alone, Connie," he'd said, "and it's about us finally having eyes and ears we can trust on the First Order."

 

When they reached the Herx-4 debris ring they followed the temporary beacons in, disabling each one as they passed, an old smugglers trick of Chewbacca’s.

The Resistance at that point was pretty much four shuttles and some dome shelters back in the caves.

_It had been 103 standard days since the destruction of the Republic and the beginning of the war against the First Order._

Poe ran through the air locks to Leia’s Shuttle One/shelter as soon as the Falcon’s ramp was fully down.

While Rey and Chewie locked the Falcon down and checked her, Rose and Mere took BB-8 straight to D’Acy at the make-shift command post on Shuttle Two to start accessing the financial data.

Connix would have gone with them but the General commed her directly, [“Connix….I want you here too and bring Threnalli.”]

“Oh please, no,” C’ai said, “Why me?”

 

Kaydel Ko thought she knew why.

Because we’re pretty much the sole survivors of the mutiny. 

_The General’s secret black envelope plan._

_If I am lost, or captured retreat to Crait. Share no flight plans. Make no transmissions regarding destination. Trust no one until you reach base or Commander Skywalker arrives to take Command._

_It could have been opened by Ackbar, or Sakura or Pierce or any second-level Command but they were already dead, unreachable or.....temporarily demoted. The sole surviving Flight Commander had been Amilyn Holdo._

_Holdo being Holdo she had followed her friend’s, her Princess’s orders down to the last bleeding letter and punctuation mark. She had trusted no one._  

 _So many “what ifs”…. they would kill you if you let them so you could not fucking let them._  

 _Holdo had paid by dying and the rest of them had to pay by living, was the way Dameron had put it._  

This was either their penance or hers, maybe both, but Leia wanted them there.  

In the weeks after Crait she gave fewer and fewer orders and when she met with anyone she made sure there were at least two other people in the room. The three of them especially.

Leia Organa was done with secrets now it seemed.

 

_She laid it out for all of them._

_In the months before the Starkiller Attack she had had myriad operations running, some for years, many known only to herself and Admiral Ackbar…others known only to her… Not just the funds hidden on Kaikielius or even the search for Skywalker but others, multiple teams she’d sent out to initiate off-the-books negotiations for military support from non-aligned groups on the Outer Rim, the people she’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to reach from Crait…all now presumed dead, captured or in hiding.She’d had a team on Hosnian Prime, Alliance Veterans planning a filibuster/procedural coup on the floor of the Senate…lost._

_She’d also kept eye’s- only lists of old Alliance sites, unused hide-outs and supply depots, some compromised but others, like Crait, still accessible as desperation bolt-holes. The secret ace had been access to a manned shadow surveillance station decommissioned in the Unknown Regions, behind First Order lines.Left over from the War and hidden even from the New Republic, it was rumored still be manned and operational since Scarif. They had called it Lighthouse._

 

 

 

Connix sat silent on a bench next to C’ai and asked no questions until the General was done grilling Dameron, and grill him she did.

_Leia was wearing only plain jumpsuits by then, the ones she had found on the Falcon. She had put her last gown and all her rings and jewelry in a box in one of the cabins there. All she wore after those first days was the black onyx hair band._

_It was a sign, looking back Connix saw it clearly, of how she was withdrawing more and more but that day she had seemed herself again, shown the old steel for the first time since Crait._

  

“What went wrong? You got separated from the team.”

“We tripped an alarm, I sent the others on alone on ahead and fell back to…Is going into detail on this part really necessary?”

The General rubbed her forehead, sighing.

She waved and he took the seat across from her.

“How did she find you?” 

“Purely by accident. She was there setting up sabotage to their data-retrieval systems and spotted me when Synar Security pinched me for unauthorized garbage access or something.” _Leia did no more than lift an eyebrow._...“And yes she saved my ass, which I realize is a thing that I keep needing, thank you…. more than my ass maybe, the First Order was already in orbit, likely just a few hours behind us.” 

“Damn it, Poe.” …quietly…“Did they know about the funds?”

 

“No,” he said firmly, and reached as if for her hand then stopped himself, laid his palm flat on the table. “No, Leia. Rose and BB-8 said the file hadn’t been accessed in more than twenty years and Andor confirmed that. They were there hunting New Republic assets not us.”

“They? Was anyone with her?

 

“No. Her family and Commander Rook are alright. Lighthouse is fully operational and secure, for now.” Dameron shook his head. “She said to tell you she’s “in field and in play” …her exact words.”

 

Leia closed her eyes. It was almost like a wince.

“How long has she been out there?

“Almost four months I gathered…so pretty much since they got the signal. Also when I say no, I mean that…Portia is also on board….in her way.”

The General looked up at him sharply, “So she told you about Portia?”

“Yeeeesss…..” Poe said cautiously, tapping his right ear.

“You mean you talked to heryourself, directly…”..?” she tapped her ear too.

 

_“What the hell are they talking about?”C’ai whispered._

_“I think…” Connix remembered Rook’s earring and the strange communication with “Lighthouse” back on the comm deck of the Raddus…”Oh fuck it..I’m not quite sure but I’ll tell you later.”_

 

Leia’s expression was almost sad. “That must have been…difficult,” she said.

 

“That’s one word for it.” He looked down for a moment. “She also said to give you her condolences, by the way, about your brother.”

“Yes,”the General nodded, “I imagine that she would.”

 

 

“How is Kaylyra?” she asked then

 

“Setting up operations under what has to be insane smoke-screen cover, making contact with cells of New Republic survivors on Chandrilla, Lothal and Corellia. On Kaikielius she just turned loose some kick ass cyber-sabotage through the…

 

“Poe, I asked how she is.”

 

Dameron stretched his fingers out and laid his hand on the table. “How the hell do you think she is Leia?” he said. “I know she’s determined and I know she’s scared. I also know that until she saw me Kayly was afraid no one else made it.That soldier could have stayed with her family, could have hunkered down to defend the station like you ordered them to….hell, she probably should have…but instead she came back in and is right now out there alone with nothing but a voice in her ear risking everything just on the hope that we…Kaylyra Andor has nerves of fucking kyber, in case you wondered.”

 

“It seemed likely.” Leia smiled a little.“It must have meant a great deal to her to learn that she wasn’t...alone, that is.”

 

_That seemed like quiet bait for something but if it was Dameron wasn’t taking it._

 

“We’ve gone to ground these last weeks Leia, so well that even Portia couldn’t track us. Good news obviously, because if they could find us we’d be dead but there’s danger in that…”

 

“Jackals..” the General said softly.

 

“Maybe. If those are what I think they are…..We have eyes and ears and we have money now….shit-tons of credits if I’m right, am I right Connie?”

 

_She’d been so caught up watching the two of them spar it took her a full second to realize he was talking to her._

 

“What? Yes,” Connix said, “We completely emptied the account and it’s all secured in two dozen different blank asset-holding sites on fifty different worlds. We were sure we’d have to cut some loose, that some of the transfers would flag auditor alerts and have to be dumped but they seem to have gone through cleanly. It looks like we got it all.”

 

The General laughed.

 

“You told me once we need leaders not heros,” Poe went on. “Ok. I think we need both but either way it’s time to start leading. If we let ourselves think it’s just us….86 wounded heros, with one…even two…leaders then they really will pick us off and we turn into just another story that oppressed people tell each other, a little fire to gather around in the dark. We need to be careful, Leia I know that. Very, very careful but after every chance we take we have to be ready to take another. We have eyes and ears now and we need to use them to start building a New Alliance not just a Resistance. These fuckers are not the Empire…yet, except in their jackbooted dreams and it’s time to start pulling the cheap bricks out from under them.”

 

C’ai spoke up, “Joma told us that Antoc Merrick had a saying, “Make ten men feel like a hundred.”

 

“Well then,” the General said, “the thirty of you had better get started. We need to get ready to transfer some of those credits, Connix, go find Emmat, he had a very clever idea. C’ai talk to Chewie and Nunb about what we’re going to need to keep these ships cloaked and fully operational. We can’t stay here much longer. Dameron, did you get a safe communication drop-site from Private Andor?”

“Yes I gave her several and she set me one to initiate….weirdly I think it’s a speeder repair depot on Tattooine.”

Leia laughed again. “Brilliant, Portia. Call D’Acy and we’ll go check on that then. Let’s see what we can do with what those eyes show us.”

Connix hurried out the airlock with C’ai.

Over her shoulder she heard

“Just one more thing Poe, dear, as someone who used to stay in a lot of very nice hotels, did you bring any of that four-star shampoo back for the rest of us?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Son of a bitch,” Suralinda said. “Rogue One didn’t die? Is everything I learned in school wrong?”

 

“Selectively condensed maybe,” Connix said.

 

“I have to admit it’s kind of amazing to see that somebody whose been feeding you fake docking papers for months and that you’ve only seen as text coordinates and or heard as voices in space port elevators telling you how to avoid security patrols is actually a 56k. human with a face. I hope your friend is alright, she must kick ass. ”

 

“Rumor had it that she did but I didn’t know her all that well,” she admitted. “ We got drunk at a few of the same parties. She had an absolute sweetheart of a best friend, Ava in the Quartermaster depot, who used to run around manually switching our laundry because our first names were so similar the fogged up droid used to deliver us each other’s underwear. We had to pencil in our initials after a while.”

“If she’s LQ2 maybethat explains why we’ve been in the dark for the last eight weeks….since…” 

_“Since we lost the General”wasn’t something any of them could quite say out loud…yet._

 

“Yes,” Connix cut her off, “We missed at least one, maybe two drops, but we still have eyes. Poe confirmed that Lighthouse is still up. We’re going to need everybody in position for FTL boosted conferences asap once we get access again.”

The Squamatan kissed her on the cheek. “Every day is hope. I have to get out of this little noise-cancelling box now and up into the noisy dangerous galaxy. I’ll talk to you soon, Connie.” 

Suralinda looked down through the glass one more time as she turned to go. “When I check in tell me though, just to warm my heart on whatever dangerous fuckery lies ahead, let me know if our brave friend Flight Commander Poe heart-on-his-sleeve Dameron is just crushing on the intrepid spy or are they actually getting it on? Audio, and/or holos appreciated. ” 

 "You're a terrible person."

"Space is boring. I'll settle for a detailed read-and-delete text report with pseudonyms."

"I'll do my best."

"It's all I ask love, May the Force be with you."

“You too, Surla.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no no no desire to wade into the post TLJ Poe/Holdo blame game.....Writing the last quarter of Over the Edge helped me come to terms and with large parts of RTJ’s lazy and gaping plot holes. Why wait thirty years? Start working now. Hold onto the parts you love. Come up fictional complexities to wrestle with. Worth a try anyway. Next up, Kayly meets Rey and the  
> Gang. Portia has views. Davits Draven does what he can.


	44. Seven Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A random list of intelligence points interspersed with memories and conjectures. As she leaves the Resistance base on Ogem after her injuries, Kayly Andor tries to review what she has learned and what it may mean for the future, in the situation of the Resistance as it rebuilds after the loss of it's leader and about herself and her relationship with Poe Dameron.. She reunites with an old friend and prepares to meet new ones, checks back in with Portia and shares some news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kayly makes lists. A little dense but seeded with her random musings.

* * *

 

 

 

**Seven Things I Learned On the Base at Ogem That Supplement the Reports Given By Command Team Prior and Post Last Contact In No Particular Order:**

  

  1. **The number of Resistance survivors has slightly increased**. Currently 183 Resistance-trained personnel are known to be alive. Of the original 87 who escaped Crait or were rescued by the Falcon on the surface. 96 others have found their way back in both with Portia’s help and without. Most had been on D’Qar but were off base and outside the Hosnian System at the time of the attack. (NOTE: this number includes 10 combat-trained pilots,four of whom were members of Black Squadron sent on off-book missions by the General roughly 72 hoursprior to the First Order attack _…and made it back in after many weeks of agony in hiding that I can totally identify with_ ). Additional Note _:_ It is remotely possible that this number may still increase.Analysis of final transmissions from and to the Raddus after the siege above D’Qar …. _I don’t know what corner of First Order hell Portia got them from and I don’t want to unless it becomes absolutely necessary_ …indicates that two small personnel transports reported FTL engine trouble and at least one x-wing escort may have dropped out of the first jump to protect them.We know FO’s Hyperspace Tracking cannot yet hold lock on multiple ships simultaneously and has an 80%failure rate in locking on to any ship smaller than 100 meters. _Also I’ll believe Laren Joma is dead when somebody shows me her body or a holo of the flame-out and not one second sooner._
  2. **A modified Haven Scenario in effect.** They are using Leia’s old Alliance notes, plus several hang-outs from Ematt’s misspent youth and Chewbacca’s misspent middle age ( _????_ ). In addition to Ogem as a safe-house, they have two shifting terrestrial non-bases and a floating FTL platform (bought and rehabbed scrap carrier) in motion. Including the Falcon they had seven mismatched ships…and as of 72 hours ago they now have ten more.



  

 

Fourteen Resistance fighters were on the little makeshift base on Ogem.

There were seldom ever more than ten. Ematt explained that it was rare for he, Nunb, Poe and D’Acy to ever be in the same place at the same time now. They had taken a chance when Poe had let them know he was bringing her in. Dameron had told her rank didn’t exactly mean anything anymore but if it did she was at least a Captain….probably Commander.

 _I already have the rank pips,_ she thought of telling them, but didn’t.

 

“Will you know what I mean if I say “Haven in a teacup,” Miss Andor…” the older man had asked.

Her father had told her about those early days, before the first base was set up on Dantooine. 

 

_“Flight squadrons stayed more or less together,” he’d said, “On in-flight Mon Cala platforms or a handful of shifting pirate service bays. “Base” for them was wherever Merrick or Ackbar told them it was. It was the same with the Pathfinders, which started as guerrilla units under Dodonna and Reikken. I’d go out on a mission and the place I came back to was almost never the place I left from.”_

_“Effective for concealment and protection of irreplaceable assets,” Portia commented, “but I imagine it had a negative effect on group cohesion and lowered morale over the long term.”_

_Papa had said nothing._

 

 

“Yes sir, I do.” she answered.

  

 

Other than Poe , BB-8 and D'Acy, she suspected that most people here like Ematt were people she had never even met on Yavin, who had joined after or been stationed elsewhere in her 21 months.

_“How many people I knew might still be alive?" was just not a question she was going to ask._

So it wasn’t until her second day upright when BB-8 rolled in before breakfast with a familiar face.

 

"Hey, Flight Cadet KA,"Kaydel Ko Connix said.

 

_Connix had shown up on Yavin six months or so before the evac to D'Qar. She was from Durathi in the Core Kayly remembered and had been assigned to Communications straight out but sometimes it had seemed as if she became the General's personal comm system. In several parts of the temples low-power signals were blocked.....part of what made it such a secure base.... when General Organa was on the move, which she almost always was and a non-emergency message came in with news or approvals needed on the fly, the fastest thing to do was send Connix tearing across the complex or the landing bays to deliver it, usually with her headset still around her neck._

_She could run really fast._

_Their first names were similar enough that the laundry sometimes sent her Connix's tiny undershorts. At Ava’s suggestion they’d started writing KC and KA on everything._

_They hadn't been close friends…different shifts, different duty….. and Kayly had always held herself back just a little from everybody except her flight cadre and Pavy and Ava._

_Connix had been on comm though when Galen's message came through and when the General talked to to Portia._

_There had been a card game in Alpha barracks during that hurricane lock down and Kayly remembered Polly declaring a contest. Whoever drew low card was supposed to recite an obscene poem on the spot in Basic in order to stay in the game._

_Blond sweet-looking Connix had won hands down._

_For her life Kayly couldn't remember a damned thing except that one had started "There once was a boy from Jakku..."_

  

"Oh fucking Force...KC."

Kayly was up in a second and they hugged each other hard, both crying at the same time.

There were so very few of them left now and the only way was forward.

 

Connix had come down to say her goodbyes. Ematt had left eight hours before and now it was her turn.

“Haven” meant there was no asking where anyone was going, not yet. 

 

  1. **Lateral Command structure is in effect.** With numbers this low major strategic decisions by a Command Council consisting of Poe, D’Acy, Nunb, Ematt and others as drafted….. _maybe the mysterious Jedi Apprentice Rey as well though her authority may be limited to….wtf?… “Jedi” matters?_ Independent cadre leaders are authorized in field and in subject areas 3PO, Mellie, Threnalli, Connix, Wexley, and others base by base and mission by mission.



 

  1. **The plan for now is that this decentralization will continue.** It is/was based on an old Alliance strategy. The risk of centralized command is great with numbers this low and the Resistance this fragile but the risks of confusion and... _gotta say it._...factional mistrust with a more flexible one will increase. Quick decision-making authority and communication structures need to be put in place in advance of large scale or strategic actions but at present the hope is that flexible command will enable link ups. Without the General as a rallying figure building trust and clarity will be essential.….. _Mama may have some_ ** _views_** _about formation of a “Council,” oh my yes._..(NOTE: Bright side of a dark place category. “Firestorm” model may be what has kept them safe in the short term. The First Order’s familiarity with the way the General’s mind works… _.worked_ … and her chain of command may have been a factor during D’Qar and the Battle of Crait. Baby Leader and FO Command expected someone else, _Poe? Rey?_ to immediately seize Leia’s mantle as leader, as figurehead.That no one would had possibly never occurred to them.) Additional Note: How much does Baby Leader know about what REALLY went down at Endor?”  



  

The plan was for Kayly to fly out with Dameron in 21 hours. They had a noisy “bubble” located at the edge of the Kessel Corridor located and the plan was to try to rig a secure real-time virtual meeting space between "Command," and Lighthouse.

_Afterwards she could hopefully get back to Roche, connect with the Verpine Resistance and reclaim her ship._

 

She sat with Connix for as long as she could in what passed for a kitchen/break room. The other woman needed to leave in less than an hour.

 

Poe had run in to bolt a cup of caff and hug a goodbye, knowing he might well still be with Nunb giving last orders to the fuel crew when KC left.

"Take care kid," he hugged Connix. “I’ll see you at the next rendezvous."

"Give my love to the Falcon if and when you see her,” she said when her feet were back on the floor.

“Oh I will, “ he promised, “I can even burn some toast in the galley so everybody knows it's from you.”

 

Connix watchedDameron duck out through the “break room” door then sat back down to finish her caf.

 

“We spent weeks on the Millenium Falcon," Connix said, as if she needed to explain something, "...all of us, crammed together.Jumps and holds for three weeks then hiding in asteroid yards. Calling it a team-building experience doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

 _Yeah. We have a name for it where I come from._  

The baby-faced officer picked up her half-eaten pastry and then laid it down again carefully. “I know you’ve been briefed, debriefed, updated and reported to pretty much since they yanked you out of the tank but…did they tell you about what happened on the bridge of the Raddus?” 

_I know her son tried to kill her. Admiral Ackbar and General Sakura were killed instantly. She survived but was incapacitated. I know Poe refused to obey orders when a cruiser commander none of you knew or trusted appeared. I know command broke down and he blames himself for every damn thing that happened after. Including the fact that said cruiser commander later sacrificed herself to turn the gutted Raddus into a fucking bomb and take out three FO Command destroyers including the lead._

 

“Yes. Some,” Kayly said.

_Tell me your version Connix._

 

“Right, so you know the fuckers blew the fighter bays and the bridge. We lost all our x-wings and the whole of Command, “ she snapped her fingers. “Leia….I don’t know how to even describe it..but she was in a coma. The surviving flight crew crowded onto the auxiliary bridge and listened to D’Acy say that chain of command was clear. I looked at Dameron, hell every damn one of us looked at him, he’d been ranking Flight Commander two hours before, Leia’s right hand, but ….” she looked down, “…Commander Holdo of the cruiser Ninka took command instead. I thought Poe was going to be sick he looked so relieved. But then Holdo wouldn’t tell us anything…not the plan, not the destination, nothing… for twenty hours they picked us off one by one by one as we sat in the dark under power-restriction. Leia was dying. We couldn’t jump and we couldn’t fight because we had not a single gun left and all she would say was “orders”.…we couldn’t take it. Poe tried sending a wildcard team out on his own to incapacitate the FTL and when Holdo found out…”

Connix stopped herself, turned the empty cup around, “Tell me something Andor, you’ve hadthese bastards under surveillance. Did they know? Did they know that she’d pinned all her hopes first on Skywalker and then allies in the Outer Rim who had either never been there to begin with or were already blockaded? Obviously the plan was to wipe out the Republic and kill us all at one blow but I can’t shake the feeling now that that somebody out there knew that if they killed her and Ackbar we’d all….crack under the pressure, distrust each other?”

 

“No and yes,” Kayly said, “In a sense it was a standard assault from the old Imperial playbook. They are a hierarchy down to their shiny boot toes so that’s the way they think. Destroy the Capital and the Republic dies. Destroy the Princess and the Rebellion dies. Destroy Command and no one can function. They aim for the leader first, then the logical successor to that leader. That’s why enormous resources were focused on finding Skywalker…” _also they really hate the Jedi”_ but we know they modeled a lot of intel action on her.They were trying to figure out not just her fixed plans but the way she thought, who she’d trust, what she’d hide, which way she’d try to run.”

 

_Ren was her damn son. Do you think old Fish-bones Snoke didn’t spend years scoping out just exactly what Ben Solo’s mother’s weak spots were?_

_They knew Ackbar too. And Poe. Do you think when that parricidal mouth-breather tore into his brain he only looked for a map?You think he maybe didn’t take a quick peek at his “replacement?”_

_Right or wrong she may have been like a cornered hare trying to jump the ring by passing her black envelope to someone the bastards had no file on, so sure that you’d follow her blind that she asked for more trust in the end than a bunch of traumatized soldiers could give._  

_Or maybe deep down she just thought when it came right down to it, when the knife got to the skin like they say in RiverTown, that her only child wouldn’t do it._

_She should have known better but she was only human after all._

 Connix shook her head. “Ackbar tried to warn her….I overheard them once…arguing…..about making the end of every line herself or Skywalker.”

 _Her and Ackbar arguing? Wow. I’d give up sweet trade to have heard that._  

“I would have died for her..Leia. We all would have. She was brilliant and brave and the greatest heroine of our age but she asked too much, from  Dameron, the rest of us….in the end she knew.”Kayly took her hand.

 _It was Shared Regret For a Sorrow that is Past, but of course Connix couldn’t know that_.

“He may be the bravest person I know. If he’d died that day at D’Qar he’d have died a hero, being what he most wanted, a pilot. Now he’s on the ground with the rest of us. He’s not her or Skywalker or whatever the hell she was trying to make him be, and I know it sounds crazy because we committed armed mutiny together but he’s a good man and a good leader.”

_I know, Connix._

 

BB-8 rolled up.

*…friend Kaydel Ko Connix….your shuttle is ready for departure sequence….*

 

“See you in the wind, Andor. May the Force be with you.”

She picked up her bag and gave Kayly a hug.

“One favor, if you can. Take care of him. He trusts you and for a guy whose heart is wide open he doesn’t actually let that many people in.”

“I will. KC.”

“Also he talks in his sleep. Mostly about spaceships.”

“I know.”

 

  1. **Leia Organa is dead.** _oh hell….writing that makes the Galaxy seem broken…._ and her passing is so far only known to the Resistance.The cause was apparently natural but something people are enormously reluctant to talk about. I had to press…. _“For several days she’d been getting, not weaker exactly, but less and less…engaged.” He spoke so very steadily, sitting there beside D’Acy, a military officer relaying the story of a fallen soldier. “We were on the Falcon. Rey had been talking with her about her brother a little while before. She had been talking to us, just sitting at the viewport and then she got quiet and.…”“She was gone from us,” D’Acy's voice. “She didn’t suffer,” Poe added, and the catch was so faint, so quickly covered….but of course you’ve heard that phrase before, haven’t you?_ …. This must be acknowledged before word gets out in some way we can’t control, before the First Order can make use of it. (NOTE: Does Supreme Leader Jr. know she is gone??? Skywalker’s “neural image ghost” seems to have conned him. Did the General?)



 

  1. **They have so far been able to circumvent the First Order's Hyperspace Tracking.** Similar to Portia's baffling, the Bothan system ofjumps and piggy-backing was working for small ships…. _It seemed like needless Bothan paranoia back in the day but now made you wonder, Papa said, about what the old Spynet knew about the Empire's experiments and when. The mystery of the Bothan ship at Endor had never really been answered_....the principles had been shared with and by lots of smugglers so hopefully the First Order had its hands full. (NOTE: Two Resistance fighters were in the room with the Tracker apparatus. Portia has questions.) Additional note: Last contact with Commander Hafor indicated that the Mon Calmari cells were working full-time trying to find a way to cloak ships over 100 meters. We need to find a way to get the Resistance into safe realtime contact with the Mon Calmari asap. _It's time for Portia to call in her idols._



  

If getting into the Ogem base was a maze then getting out again was all that and a shell game.

The actual craft they flew to meet with what currently passed as the "Resistance Fleet" would be a little mining transfer shuttle but the choreography involved them being in the shuttle and the shuttle in the belly of a massive S-91 wrecker transport until, as per their bribes, her captain unceremoniously dumped them in just the right spot to fire up and sneak into the Ison Corridor.

_Kayly couldn't help but remember a silly nurslings song about a Mem who swallowed a bug and then a bat to eat the bug and then a frog to swallow the bat and on and on until they swallowed a Blue and a Taun to stomp the Blue .....you wouldn't sing that song in front of any Taun though, it upset most of them terribly._

 

An hour or two of jumps after that they would drop off into in a wild card asteroid belt popular with see-nothing-say-nothing cobalt miners and meet the Millennium Falcon.

_“Looks aren’t everything,” Portia had said about that ship, avery un-Portia-like remark._

 

 

She braced herself.

The moment they cleared the tunnels out from the Ogem base though, the old man's voice sounded in her ear.

[" _This ship is in unconsciencebly poor repair. Get out of it as quickly as possible_."]

 

"The one we're sitting in or the one transporting the one we're sitting in?"

[" _The exterior transport. As nearly as I can tell with the primary systems offline the ship you are sitting in is merely shabby and inefficient but the larger transport is in imminent danger of explosion which will be a mercy when it comes but you do not want to be nearby._ " 

"What's she saying?"

Dameron must have read her pained expression.

"She's ragging on the transport."

"Hello Portia!" he called companionably, "Whatever you're saying I'm sure you are absolutely right. It's strictly cover though, I swear. We're jumping off the death trap while it's still in system."

[" _Good. Hurry_."]

"She says hi."

[" _Kaylyra, we need to talk_."]

 _Shit._  

 _Ok. Fine. Let's get it over with_. 

 There was no other place to go for privacy in the dressing down/silicone intelligence guilt trip that was coming. Even in the cockpit power was at minimum and the rest of the shuttle had gravity off.  

"Poe, I'm going to be yelled at in my own head here now for a few minutes ....so..."

He nodded and slipped on the headset. She'd warned him this would happen.

_There had to be some empathy there._

_Portia could make your eyes water sometimes but at least she couldn't slap you._  

Kayly braced herself and turned her seat around.

"Portia..before you start, just tell me are....?"

[" _Your parents are both well Kayly. I have reassured them that you are safe and largely recovered from your injuries and they are very relieved. Cassian is quite anxious for a direct report_." ] _Oh Force_. [" _When will you be in a position to attempt direct transmission?_ "] 

"Not yet, once we leave the system we can try to fire up the comms."

There was a space, the sort of pause that Portia always left to remind you that if she could sigh she would be doing it right now.

[" _Your skeletal trauma has been well repaired but you have suffered minor muscle loss and soft tissue damage._ "]

_Yes Portia. My legs are also weirdly pale but Mellie says that will pass._

 "I feel fine. I'll start working out tomorrow."

[" _This situation is less than private with Poe nearby. Would you be more comfortable waiting to review the mission after we can establish comm?_ "]

_Which is worse, you mean? Getting this done out loud on whatever ship audio you can patch in in front of Poe and Ea knows who else or now in the old man's voice in my head?_

_No, please. Let's just get it over with._

_....wait, are you guys on a first name basis now?_

 

She closed her eyes so she could at least feel like she was alone.

"Can we just say that you were right and I was wrong and let my near-death experience stand as a cautionary tale?"

Another space.

["Y _ou pursued the mission at an unacceptable risk level anddespite an abort recommendation. Do you concur with that assessment?_ "]

"Yes." _Sometimes I actually wish you could just slap me._

[" _I understand that your casual stance is an attempt to deflect tension and avoid the stress inherent in projections of the enormous pain your death would cause all of us Kayly. I also have confidence in your understanding of the ratifications, emotional and strategic, attendant to your loss or capture._ " 

_If by that you mean the agonizing knowledge that if I die out here you will have to be the one to tell my parents the details, yes I know that. I also know that if I get captured and I use that LS3 patch in my sleeve that we don't tell Papa about but he surely knows anyway.... or even worse if I get captured and I can't ....that you will have to tell them that too. Yes. I am always aware._

"Understood, Portia"

[" _I hope I sufficiently conveyed my gratitude to Poe for his quick action."]_

_I love you too old ghost._

"What's the situation on Roche? Did the Verpine crews get out? What about the smugglers?"

[" _45 of the 50 Verpine and Taureg and droid workers safely reached the shelters before the explosion. These fled through the service access tunnels when I managed to override the gates. The Corellians escaped as the First Order andRPTTA forces arrived. They...Jyn has informed me that the term "fracked" is applicable....shot their Captain Dollen and two other of their crew with whom the majority seem to have had grievances. They then commandeered the ship and fled even as you and your friends escaped. Hopefully your contact will take the first opportunity to jump ship because this conveniently made them suspects. The body of Nori Herrick not being found among the wreckage I am afraid I was required to lay a false trail linking her to the late unlamented Captain Dollen to explain her absence_."]

 

_Well, Force bless you Nori you bitch. You betrayed the First Order AND ran off with a band of back-stabbing fuel smugglers? I hope they make you their queen._

 

“Serris? Did she get the message in time”

[“ _Just barely but she got all her people out. The Verpine forces have retreated from the townships with minimal losses. As disappointing as this setback is the knowledge that they have an internal security breach is far better revealed now than after theirforces were more exposed._ ”]

“She told you that?”

[“ _No. The only messages received from her directly was a query about our continued survival, a notification that all security passwords were changed, regrets and some sort of ritual statement about the disposal of the heads of her enemies._ ”]

“Oh yeah. She’s a peach.”

[“ _Guardian is still secure._ ”]

“Good.”

_Thank heaven….it was only a ship, Bodhi reminded her of that constantly. Never risk yourself for a thing that can be replaced. But still…_

[“ _Kaylyra, is Leia Organa living?_ ”]

She kept her eyes closed.

_How had she known? Something in my voice or Poe’s?_

“No.”

[“ _I am so sorry. I feared that it might be so. I understand your situation may be constrained right now. Is this priority information or do you wish me to delay informing your parents, Bodhi and Ava of this sad event until you can communicate the details yourself?_ ”]

“Thank you, Portia. I would rather do it myself if possible.”

[‘ _I will wait then. Please give Poe Dameron and BB-8 my condolences._ ”]

“I will.”

[ _“Kayly. Poe’s father is here with me now. We have spoken at length and I have reassured him that his son is well but I need to know how best to proceed._ ”]

“Alright. Give me a moment.”

 

 _He has to know Yavin IV was stormed, so he must also know that it was mostly evacuated before the First Order got there._  

 

She would need to keep her voice level. 

Kayly took the ear cuff off carefully and turned the seat back to face Dameron.  

“Poe?”

He pulled off the headset. 

“We’re stable for now but…on Kaikielius you asked Portia to look for something but not tell you what she found?”

“Hijo de puta,” he said quietly. 

“Portia has “ethical parameters” as she calls them but it’s your decision to make, and I will do my best to follow your wishes but going forward that would mean hiding things from you and I don't want to do that, don’t want to ever be in a position where I have to do that.”

He nodded but didn’t look at her.

“You don’t  remember what you said to me on Roche, do you Andor? When we pulled you out of the rubble?”

“No.”

BB-8 de-magged himself from the wall then and rolled over, weaving a little from the rough rumble of the transport around them, When he was close beside the seat he rotated his head assembly around as if to peer at Poe, making a low worried sound and pressing against the pilot's knee.

Dameron laid his hand on his friend’s casing.

“Ok. Tell me.”

“We found him. He’s fine and as safe from the First Order as it is possible for us to make him. He loves you and misses you and says do what you have to do and don't worry about him.”

*….Pop is well?…* the droid chirped.

“Yeah, buddy…Yeah. Pop is well.”Poe wiped his eyes and Kayly, unable to reach him buckled in the co-pilots seat, held out her hand and after a minute or two he reached across to take it. From that angle she could only hold his fingertips. Comfort Wished for Though Separated. It was not what she wanted to say but it was enough.

 

 

Kayly put the earring back on but Portia said nothing more until they were unceremoniously dumped out of the transport’s rear cargo bay twenty-five minutes later.

She would finally see the famous Falcon. She would meet a Jedi and a First Order Stormtrooper who had joined the resistance and helped destroy the Starkiller. She would meet an actual Wookie.

 

  1. ******My exposure has been increased.** Portia and I have made direct contact with the survivors of the Resistance. This was what we came out here to do and now I've done it, albeit with a lot less planning than I probably would have if a control platform hadn't fallen on me and I will never see the General again…. _What if she had come with us when Ava asked her to? …_ but I sat in a room and reported what I know of our situation. I am part of an army again and my work will change because of it. I’m going to be an axle on which a lot of spokes meet for a while. I was scared to be alone and now I’m scared not to be alone. 



 

 

 _“I know about war,” Mama had said, “it will take everything if it can. Home and dreams and hope and life and love and chances. It will take away your belief in yourself as a good person. It will put you in situations where you have to take those things away from yourself.Don’t let it. Fight and if you lose fight again to get back what it took from you.”_  

She would tell him that someday. 

 

 

 

 

 

They talked a little in between, breathless, but there had not been much time in that narrow shuttle on Ogem. 

_Those things are sound-proof when the doors are sealed. That was good._

_She officially did not care and was pretty sure that he didn’t either but still...the last thing either of them needed was the whole tiny base hearing._

 

When he turned behind her and held her back to him... oh bless the boy, as light as if she were it damn pancake...it had seemed so different but also so much the same as in that stupid beautiful hotel room.

As if wherever his hands were at that second was what he most wanted to hold, the most important thing. 

She had pushed his jacket up a little above their heads at some point, although she wasn't sure when, and when he reached up fumbling for somethingin one of the pockets of his jacket...probably the little clip- comm in the pocket. It had a timer. Kayly stopped his hand.

“Nine minutes," she told him.

"Ok."

He didn't ask her how she knew.

He had gallantly shifted enough that she managed to lie flat but it meant his back against the track rail of the seat while half leaning over her. 

“You cannot be comfortable."

That made him laugh a little.

"Kaylyra, I need to be able to walk away from this in less than eight minutes, discomfort might be useful to me right now."

_You and me both pal._

 

She traced his collarbone lightly.

He still wore that silver chain and she lifted it, turning the ring of steel casing in her fingers.

Everything she was feeling needed to be put away and she was pretty sure if she looked at him right now she was going to need a bigger box.

 

 

_I know what this is Poe. It's your mother's wedding ring. In the Core and on some of the old Mid-Rim settlements they still exchange rings, anillo de bodas. A pilot and an infantryman got married between missions in the service bay of a Mon Calmari carrier ship called the Resolution by a Gold Squadron pilot named Marco who had been a notary on Coruscant. They didn't tell a soul until much later._

_He gave it to you for....luck? to remember her by? to remember that hope can be found in desperate places?_

_He doesn't know you wear it all the time._

_He definitely doesn't know I first saw it while pulling your shirt off in a hotel fresher._

_Your father talked about you for five solid hours._

_Honestly, soldado, the things I know._

  

“Poe..” she said, “It’s time.”

“I know,” he said. “Give me one of those kisses of yours, one of those last and first ones.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from the poorly organized notebooks of Kayly Andor, spy, soldier, daughter of heroes and young woman falling for a guy in wartime.


	45. What Lies Ahead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set some eighteen months after the First Order attack, a settlement of refugees is visited by a First Order Search crew looking for signs of the elusive Resistance. An old prospector makes sure they do not find what they are looking for.  
> The refugees of Yavin IV are visited by crew of Resistance fighters. There are some small and unexpected reunions. News is exchanged and the generations of the fight against the Dark Side face ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumping ahead a little bit. Some old friends from the Endor chapters of OTE check in. Black Squadron...mostly...lived, not that I care about such things but it's canon apparently.

 

 

 

 

“I was told you paid for information” the old cobalt miner muttered sullenly. “You can’t blame me just because them fat Twileck bitches were running some scam. I’ve been strictly legit with ya.”

 

The First Order.... _officer? Boss?…these posers all had made up titles, Commander, First Lieutenant, Third Moff Poobah...fuck ‘em. Just because you wrapped your scrawny ass in a set of gabberwool crease-pressed pajamas and barked orders to a bunch of twitchy too-lazy-to-Clone-so-we’ll-just-fuck-up-some-kids-we-stole in stormtroopers armor didn’t mean you were the Emperor_ … guy in charge prissed something to the nearest suit of armor and Bisk found a rifle pointed at him.

 

“If we find out you were involved in deceiving the First Order for the purposes..”

 

Bisk made out that he was afraid…”Hey! Hey! No need for that your honor…I’m a veteran of the old army, got my papers and everything. You been posting everywhere that you wanted info on coaxial signatures, looking for pirates and Resisters hiding ships right? And how you’d pay in good AU for info and tips? When I tipped you to the blips in that mine, how was I to know those old biddies were trying to water down fake Rhydonium? It could been five X-wings instead of five bogus fuel canisters? And down here I been seeing action on my mineral reader flights and I call it in to you pros first thing, spot on...oughta be reimbursed for the lost time at least eh, it’s only right.”

 

The troopers were walking all up and down the slopes pushing their scan units over the ankle-deep moss. The things kept beeping and lighting as they swept up the little bits of metal scattered on the black sand between clumps.

 

“Sir,” one of the troopers said, holding out some of the fingernail-sized flakes of white. They looked like tarnished fish scales. “It’s the same here as at the other site. Scanners say it’s refined coaxial but we’re showing barely trace amounts, certainly not power-capable. It looks like somebody tried to cut up an FTL Engine fuel chamber and it shattered. These might be flakes of the lining. Badly water degraded…seven years old from the look.”

“No sign of the engine itself sir or any active craft.” said another suit, this one in a black rain slicker.

 

“No. It’s only once in a pink moon you even see better than a sky-hopper through the clouds out here, except on delivery days.” Bisk shook his head as if sad then brightened,“Though theres a lot of abandoned stations and old farms around and sometimes people find old ships and parts just left behind….some of em’ fifty or more years old…I use an old AS3 engine to to power my digger rig. Wouldn’t put it past some of these farmer-handymen to try and cut up an old….”

 

“Who lives here?” Sir Dickweed waved toward the broken moss-covered greenhouses and the outbuildings down the slope.”

 

“Scans show signs of recent human habitation, sir,” Slicker said. “The area was drone-scanned in a planet-wide sweep six months ago. There were about 40 humans of various ages bio-recorded at the time but no DNA markers for flagged traitors or fugitives of the illegal Republic were noted at that time. The greenhouse is set for passive tuber-growth.”

 

“Soil farmers,” the old man said. “I remember seeing ‘em. Sometimes forty sometimes ten. Family groups that squat on the old stations for a season or two, lay down a slow-grow crop and then move on to another. They come back to harvest usually but sometimes not for a year or two even. Hither and yon bouncing between four or five different places North and South in old barge speeders tryin to scratch out a living. Usually they don’t truth told. Might be back next year or somebody else might move in. Grubbers…” he shook his head. “Poor bastards from the Rim. Jackals bring them out here with their babies and they think that rain means everything will grow. Lah’mu ..teaches ‘em different. Always a few more when those starve though….been watching their kind come and go for fifty years.”He winked at the grey suit, “But you’re right, Governer, who’s to know right? They could be Resisters hiding x-wings under a blanket or whatnot. I tell you what sir, I’ll keep an eye out for ‘em and tell you when they get back and keep scanning eh? Heck I can check all their places out. A little retainer and bet I find the leisure to watch the whole continent for you and your Supreme Lender. It’ll be money well spent right?”

 

_______________________

 

 

 

 

 

Advance Commander Corrine, swore bitterly under his breath. He was well past any dreams of the glorious career advancement that would result from his being the one to find the key to the location of the traitorous Resistance. Now he merely clung to an increasingly forlorn hope that he could find somefuel smugglers and forestall being transferred back to the Antaxes belt to the grueling dangerous asteroid-by-asteroid search.

 

He caught the scan-tech’s eyes on him. Corrine knew must appear to show resolve no matter what. He signaled the trooper who struck a blow with the side of his rifle that sent the old parasite sprawling.

 

“You will give the officer all information you have on these migrants out of gratitude to the Supreme Leader for his valiant quest to restore order to a lawless galaxy. Try to deceive the First Order again for your own gain and you will find yourself paid in credit you like even less.”

 

 _Nice, retort Cerrine….conveyed both contempt and superior position and strength._ He would save that one for a better occasion.

 

As an afterthought, as he turned to head back to the troop shuttle he told the standing troopers, “Burn the greenhouse.”

 

 

________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_The afternoon rain was heading in early, thank the fucking Force._

 

The troopers were probably trained to tough out wet boot liners, but the bosses didn’t like it and made great show of sweeping back to their shuttles.

 

_Blood-suckers must be watching old holos of Imperial parades up their on those shiny destroyers and looking at themselves in mirrors. What kind of people raise their kids to say “Gosh mom, when I grow up I want to be just like Grand Moff Tarkin, the Executioner of Alderaan? He really knew how to make an exit.”_

 

_Big guns, small gonads._

 

 

 

Rob Bisk stayed back well away from the flames that curled around the burning structure until his handheld lit.

Beeteetwo from up on the pole station telling him they were gone.

Bastards’d left some cameras no doubt but those would take about ten minutes to false-feed.

 

_Fucking gangsters. Some of us didn’t learn this from holos, or didn’t your grandaddies holos teach you that?_

It was a shame about the greenhouse but you had to give those fuckers something to burn. It made ‘em feel satisfied with themselves.

 

He made himself sit in the rain and watch the fire until he was sure it was clear but the foam canisters hidden in the ceiling were popping. He could hear them. Those and the rain would save most of it. As long as the frame held they could re-build.

 

_Most of the real crop had been rolled out and into the caves anyway. Those pretty folkhad been clever enough to keep their kids all safe, saved the gear and most of their food with a little help from old Rob and those lavender-toed hags up on the ridge. Clever though. With luck they’d be ignoring any little blips they spotted here for a while._

 

The big ginger guy and that woman with the sweet arm muscles and more salt than pepper braided hair came up first to recon.

 

Big Ger shook his hand and that Ms. Andellagave him a kiss on his wet cheek… _.damn_ ….they both thanked him and said he ought to stay but he wasn’t keen for it right then and felt like he oughta get back up North before those witches tried to jump his claim.

 

_No, no good as it felt… as it was….definitely worth a black eye and split lip, between a fair lady’s kiss and the chance to spit on some shiny boots again…even if just metaphorically.….but….maybe another time…._

 

 

Three hours later the last First Order Ship jumped out of the system and two A-wings used the distortion to shield their own drop down onto Lah’mu’s surface.

 

 

From 5 k away up the hill Bisk watched them glide, skimming the surface of the water and then circle round low and careful over the slope and down. He’d never been a pilot. The closest he got was digging trenches on the ground at Ryloth but he’d watched enough. These fly-jockeys were good, whoever they were.

 

 

______________________________________ 

 

 

 

 

There were five of them. Four humans and a Abenado. They had rifles and spread out as they came around the smoking frame of the building

 

In the shadow of the wall Ger squared his shoulders and reached for the blaster but she laid a hand on his arm. “It’s ok,” she said, “They’re ours.”

 

The flight suits were civilian cast-off, but Mira Andella saw it in the way they walked as they came down the slope from where they’d ditched the ships.

These were soldiers of the Republic coming to the aid of their own.

_Damn it old woman. Do NOT get choked up about this._

 

She walked up to the nearest… _big guy, 1.9 maybe, 107k…pale with a dark beard, could handle himself_ … and spoke before she thought, “Sargeant Mira Andella, Third Infantry, Pathfinders Recon. Position secure, sir.”

The man had already lowered the blaster.

“Commander Temmin Wexley,” he said.

Before the big guy could say more another man stepped up beside him… _this must be the lead officer…tan, dark-haired 1.7 ish, 74k…weirdly familiar…_ …with a hand extended,“Sargent Andella what’s your..?”

 

Behind her she heard shouts.

Mina’s voice and Will’s, “Loco! No! come back!” “¡No! Detener!”

 

The dog was barreling around the corner of the scorched building barking like a lunatic.

Four of the soldiers raised their rifles again and for a second everything slowed the way it always did and she thought, _No, No don’t let the kids see this._

 

“Don’t shoot!” someone yelled, but it wasn’t Ger or the children, it was the Republic officer.

The man had let go of the rifle and dropped to his knees in the mud.

 

Ger grabbed Will, running behind, as Loco passed him at full speed and leaped into the kneeling soldiers arms, nearly knocking him over.

 

“What the hell is that?” the Anenado soldier asked.

The dog was alternately barking and whining, rolling on the soggy ground and leaping up to lick the officers face.“Estúpido perro. Buen chico,” the man was saying, trying to lift the wild happy animal, laughing and trying bury his face in its sopping fur, “I love you too, stupid perro,”

 

“Wow, Dameron,” said the one named Wexley, “Is there nowhere we can go that we won’t run into people you’ve dated?”

 

_Poe Dameron. Kes’s boy. The one who’d taken down the Starkiller._

_The Resistance had come for them._

 

“Sargent Andella,” he said to her, trying to hold the dog away from his face.The hero of the skies over Takodanna did not look like an officer asking for a report, he looked like a desperate young man searching a field shelter. 

“Is he here? Is my father here?”

 

 

 

 

 

They went back into the blackout shelters in the hillside and dragged in the rest of the solar lights. Everybody wanted to see and talk.

 

“…only station-bred leeches would have been fooled into thinking wood-root was low-solanum tuberosum….” Ger was saying earnestly to the Abenado, a pilot named Threnalli. “Damn right!” the fellow intoned.

 

“Jake Farrell,” the older man shook the hand of every one in turn then stopped when he came to Wexley. “I should tell you, I guess …I flew with your mum at Endor, and your step-dad too. I held Gold Five.” 

“An honor to meet you sir,” the big man said, and Farrell held his hand for a minute longer, silently, eyes down before turning away. “No son,” he said, “The honor’s mine.”

 

_“Nora Wexley,…,” he told her at the campfire later after most of the younger folk were asleep. “Helluva pilot, married Wedge Antilles after the war.Helped raise her kids.They were both teachers at the Academy on Hosnian Prime last I heard.,” the old pilot was a rock, unfailing optimistic most of the time Mira knew, “Fuck it all Andella. Last I saw Antilles was when he came to Yavin for the memorial. It must have been ten years ago,” he clenched and unclenched his hands, “He laughed and said, “we can’t just all tend bar on the beach Jake you lazy bastard, some of us had to quit drinking and teach the Republic how to fly.”_

 

 

“She came about four…five months after, just her alone,”Mira told him as they gathered everyone backthe blackout shelters.

“Said she was running Intelligence,” Ger said.“Flight Corporal Andor, she said she was taking him somewhere safe but she didn’t say where.”

 

“She was,” Dameron reassured him. “She did.”

 

“Your dad knew her right off,”Farrell said. “She was the one who told us he might be in danger so he went with her…I hoped it was bullshit frankly but twice we saw these weird little black drones.”

 

Loco kept running back and forth between Commander Dameron and Will and Mina Cadiz, barking. In the end the only way to keep him quiet was to have both youngsters sitting close next to the pilot while the wet dog sat on his feet.

 

The youngest children were asleep on the bunks, but the older ones like Will and Mina were up and listening. Her Eva stood leaning against the back wall,

 

Eva who had turned eighteen last week.

 

 

 

Dameron explained how they had tracked them by following the First Order.

The Resistance had a series of bases and had been leading a series of attacks on FO supply lines so now the FO was extending itself, searching as if under rocks.

“So that’s the General’s plan for now,” Lorrainne Ker said, “Harry and thin their resources?”

“No.” One of the other soldiers, a human female named Pava. “It’s ugly. Their ships are big, fast and vicious and they’ve taken over the shipyards at Kuat and Fondor but we’ve denied them anything closer to restock their losses.”

 

“They are finding the new corridors they punched harder to maintain than they thought to re-supply from the UR. They depoted fuel in the Core and Mid-Rim projecting total victory within three months. There are profiteers and Outer Rim weapons and fuel dealers who will sell to them but they have to pay top credit.

 

“The plan is to harry, make them spread their line and then cut it half.”

“You have ships?” Sandra asked.

“We have ships,” Dameron said, “Mon Cala has built a fleet.”

 

“Yes!” young Rikki and Farrell both said in unison.

Mira wished the children weren’t here.

She wished there was a way to wait think through how to break it to them but she needed to know, she needed to hear it from someone who had been there. Who had seen…

“We’ve heard the broadcasts,” she said quietly, “but, it’s hard to know what to believe sometimes, Commander Dameron. Please, tell us the truth. Is Leia Organa truly gone?”

The room fell silent.

 

The man, Kes Dameron and Shara Bey’s son, leaned forward to meet her eye. “No one is ever really gone,”he said firmly, “I believe that as much as I believe anything in this universe, but General Organa passed from from us several months after the attack. She stands beside us but this war is ours now, to keep hope alive and rebuild her Republic.”

 

Somewhere in the back someone, Vessa, began to cry quietly, but everyone else stood or sat with heads bowed.

It was one thing to hear it said but most of them had known. 

 

_A pirate broadcast had gotten through half a year ago._

_Just three pieces of music. “All Stars Burn as One” the anthem of the Republic, followed by a beautiful piece some older people half-recognized but they had puzzled over until Essie of all people identified it as from Naboo, the Funeral Hymn of Padme Amidala, and then last of all “The Hope of Alderaan.” They’d played over again again and again for several days._

 In her heart she’d known then.

Mira Andella moved the rings she wore from her right hand to her left, the hand of mourning.

Across the room she saw her daughter do the same.

 

 

 

 

The survivors of Yavin met to decide.

Commader Dameron made it clear they had come to assess, not to evacuate unless Republic citizens were in immediate need.

 

They had brought supplies. Blasters. Medical supplies. Scan-baffling equipment, a cloaked HSC binary beacon so they could signal the Resistance or it’s allies for emergency extraction in real time and a narrow beam two-way comm.

 

“Where does it send to?” Sandra Tyree asked.

“It drops signal into the Akkadese Maelstrom,” Lt. Pava explained.

_That made no sense…_

“Isn’t that some legendary static hole?” Sand asked, “They always taught us that was why ships are deaf and mute for most of the Kessel Run.”

 

“I’ve got somebody who picks up and delivers through there,” Poe Dameron said. “We can get news to you.”

 

They couldn’t go back to Yavin IV, not yet, but now they at least had a way to find out what was happening. Most people were in favor of sticking it out.

Farrell put it best, “We’re as safe here as anywhere and we have the means to be a Resistance outpost.”

 

It was voted that they’d stay for now, rebuild and do what they had been doing, only now they knew they were a part of something. They weren’t alone.

 

 

 

The Resistance only had a few hours left to get out unseen.

Several people wanted to see the ships so Pava and Threnalli and a kid named Mere took a group out.

Farrell and some of the old veterans talked Wexley’s ear off.

 

Most though wanted to talk to Dameron.

It meant a surprising lot to people that it was one of their own bringing this to them.

 

_“I don’t know if you remember me…” Sand Tyree said._

_He laughed, “I don’t know, what were there twenty of us in V.School? I’m going to have to think hard."_

_“I was the self-involved , over-achieving bossypants desperate to get off of Yavin.”_

_“Hey! now I remember, and I was the pencil-necked spaceship nerd with bad hair and extremely poor social skills, also desperate to get off Yavin.”_

_She gave him a hug._

_“Holos, ma’am,” Wexely said, “I will pay any amount for a copy of your yearbook.”_

 

“I hope your Dad is ok,” Mrs. Hollis said. “When you find him give him our love. We miss him….all of us, not just that silly dog.”

“I will ma’am.”

 

 

Mira went to help unload and when she came back she saw Eva talking to Commander Dameron, but he was not joking then, only listening and speaking to her quietly and seriously. She tried not to eavesdrop as hard as any mother had ever tried.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“¡Siéntate!” Mina Cadez said and Loco sat.

 

“You’ve done so well with him, I know my Pop is going to be so grateful.”

“He’s our watchdog too,” Will wanted the pilot to know. “He knows when speeders or ships are over even before Essie sometimes.”

“He’ll want to go with you but we’ll explain to him that he can’t go in an x-wing and he has to wait until you come back,” Mina said

 

Poe Dameron kissed the dogs grey head and told them to take him back inside.

So it would be easier on the dog, he said.

_He might have fooled the childrenbut he didn’t fool her…..hell he probably didn’t even fool the children._

The big man, Wexley lay a hand on his shoulder as they turned away. 

 

Goodbyes were said and about ten people walked back up to help uncover the A-wings and watch them go.

 

“She wanted to go with you, didn’t she?” she asked, as she walked beside Commander Dameron, "My Eva."

“We aren’t here to recruit,” he said, “Not yet. I told her that she can do more good helping man this post for now. She’s only eighteen.”

 _I was only nineteen when I showed up at Dantooine,_ she wanted to say. _I snuck away in an discount shuttle from Alderaan to to Coruscant where I knew girl who knew a girl who had a contact. Six months later I was on Dantooine training to fightfor a cause I believed in and I wrote letters and sent holos when it was safe but I never saw home again._

_Do you think I can keep her here much longer?_

 

“And the Princess? Have you taken her home?”

“No ma’am,” he didn’t ask what she meant. “The ring of Alderaan is being watched by the First Order…but we will, in time. It’s what she wanted.”

 

Mira nodded. She had left the same instructions. That her ashes be taken home.

 

“It’s alright,” she said, “The bastards can’t stop her. She’ll get there in the end. Your mama had a saying Commander, I don’t know if you ever heard it, but she plucked my squad up out of some hairy situations back in the day and I remember she used to say, “That’s the great thing about space, you can get anywhere from there.”

 

 

 

They watched the two ships lift out as the morning rains started, misty, up and North to sneak out on other side of the planet.

 

Sergeant Mira Andella, Third Infantry Pathfinders, ARR went back to help Sandra Tyree hook up the new comms while the rest of the community went to work re-building the greenhouses.

 

 

Loco slipped out later and ran up the slope to bark at the sky for hours in the direction the two Resistance ships had gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this dog too much, don't I?  
> Part of this was inspired by seeing a picture of Oscar Isaac in high school.


	46. The Trooper and the Spy: Parts 1-3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn, presently an officer in the army of the Resistance and formerly First Order Stormtrooper FN-2187 recollects experiences with Intelligence Officer Kaylyra Andor, beginning with his first meeting with her after she is badly injured in an undercover mission and continuing through an "introductory interview" she proposes. Finn becomes curious about this soldier, whose experience of and relationship to the Resistance seems so different from everyone else's, and about her relationship with his friend Poe Dameron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our girl through other eyes, specifically Finn's. Our Stormtrooper doesn't realize how unique a jewel he is sometimes. Kayly is very good at her job, and if Poe Dameron is uncomfortable with the heat he will need to stay out of the kitchen.

 

 

  

PART 1

 

_On Roche none of it had made sense._

"...Rebel personnel ...down ..." Poe's voice had crackled over the comm and he thought, What the hell? 

As ordered Finn ran down an empty and none-too-clean service stairwell then turned and went down another and another toward the lower vehicle access. Greenish back-up generator lighting had come on and was making everything look even grottier now. At the very bottom he came to a door labeled, "Lower Level Transport." On the wall beside it a scratched-up comm-chip panel on the door dimly blinked: passcode required. 

_Think, soldier...think. Time is a factor here._

It didn't look reinforced. The frame was solid steel but the door itself might just be hollow-core plas. This whole place looked like it had been built by the type who cut corners.

Every damn alarm in the place must already be going off right?

_You can do this, man. Just hit it hard with your full weight, right straight on the attachment mechanism._

Finn stepped back and charged to slam the door shoulder first…. 

And went flying though to land sideways and skid across the steel floor.

The lock had been either broken or blocked open. 

 

Concrete dust hung in the green light as he picked himself up and looked around. Not a single sign of life or movement anywhere, not even droids.

A dozen speeders were parked in charging racks all around the concrete perimeter There was a personnel shelter and gate at the far end of the level still lit by flashing emergency lights but no one was inside.

_Where was everybody?_

 

Rose's voice came over his hand comm then, faint and static-y.

(("......what........))

“Rose! Tell Poe I'm on the lower parking level now. Are you hurt?"

(("....No…I’m fine…."))

"What did he mean "rebel personnel"? Is someone up there with you? What's happening?"

((“……hurt…….Poe says she’s one of ours….I don’t know…")) 

 

 _OK. Half these transports were unlocked._ _This must be employee parking or something._

One dinged-up old SoroSub even had a half-eaten bag lunch on the passenger seat, part of a sandwich and some kind of fruit.

He picked up the audio clip inside the nearest open speeder and tried Sheridan's link. Her voice came through loud and clear. 

\\\“Palpatine's balls!!!! What did you unsupervised toddlers break in there! I saw your ships go out but now I'm showing alarms flipping on everywhere and Security forces heading this way. We need to scamper and we need to do it now."// 

"Reva! A bomb went off but it wasn't us. I'm coming out from the East end. Poe and Rose are trying to get out from the central bay..."

\\\“I’ll move in to pick you up but hurry!"//

Rose must have heard her.

((".....says tell Sheridan to move in closer…."))

"Reva, move straight in toward the center bay. They've got somebody injured and they're trying to bring them out. I'll head that way and meet you." 

\\\"That's Captain Sheridan to you trooper-boy. On my way."// 

"Rose! She’s coming, you and Poe need to get yourselves out of there."

_No answer._

"Rose are you safe?

(("..... ok I swear…we both are…” ))

 

Finn fired up the SoroSub junker and raced it up the ramp towards daylight. 

 _It’ll be ok. Poe Dameron can fly anything,_ he reminded himself. _He'll get her out._

 

 

 

 

 

PART 2

 

 

Sheridan kept the jets running on the Arkanis Lady, hovering 30 cm. above the ground even as Poe pulled the square-backed transport alongside the open ramp and killed its engine. He ran back as Finn jumped down from the ships ramp to help him pull open the back of the speeder where Rose was pushing a makeshift stretcher out.  Sheridan's droid appeared, slid locked arms under the whole thing and moved it, perfectly level, up the slope. "Hurry, hurry, hurry!!" it squeaked.

Rose hurled herself into his arms to hold him tight for a few seconds, then broke away quickly to run inside. The ramp started to close while he was still walking on it. Reva Sheridan was in a big damn hurry.

 

The person they had rescued turned out to a human female.. _which he had already assumed since Rose and Poe kept saying “she,”..._ roughly tied down with rags onto what looked like a pre-fab door and a chunk of infantry armor. The woman was half-conscious and breathing fast and shallow as they carried her up the ramp.

"Poe...I..." she was gasping

"We're getting out of here now, Kayly. It's going to be alright," Poe stayed near her head. As Finn fell back with Rose he caught a glimpse of a pale and bloodied face, framed by longish black hair greyed with dust. She was wearing what looked to be a badly torn First Order Tactical officers uniform, but he couldn't see the rank cylindars.

Rexxee slid the whole slab smoothly onto the fold-down bunk in the "lounge" at the top of second ramp. 

 

"Who is this?" he asked Rose, who answered breathlessly.

"Her name is Kayly. She's from the UR...she knew about Hays..."

Before she could say more Poe yelled out, "Finn, get over here. I need a hand buddy! Help me strap her down!"

 

Sheridan appeared to administer some "First Aid" that would have passed for torture in most places then dashed back with Rexxee to the cockpit.

_Fortunately the drugs must have kicked in fast. After one scream the woman went limp and a few minutes later started breathing more normally._

 

Poe had what Rey called his "Command" face on.

"I need to stay with Andor," he said, strapping in on the lone wall seat beside the bunk."Buckle in with Rose below til we’re out and clear. Check with Rey and C’ai if you can reach them on the cloaked comm from there. ” 

BB-8 had already wedged himself under the storage bin and magged down.  _The little droid obviously knew what was coming._

 

RXE-33’s voice … _why did it sound like it was echoingthrough a barrel?_ …made an announcement.

“PASSengRS. YOur Elderly And EMOtionallY UNstable CAPtain ASKS that YOu pleasE REturn all trAYS And TAbles to A LOCKed POSItion And SECUure yoOUR shoulder HARNEesses anD REstrAINTs. IT’s Going to GET Ugly.”

 

 _Oh shit. Sheridan was going to do that thing where she rolled the ship over as she hit the FTL._  

As the Arkanis Lady started to turn and accelerate faster than the internal gravity could compensate he slid down the rail to the “galley” level and buckled in next to Rose. The caff cups started sliding and above his head he could  hear Poe Dameron groan“Ohhhh…she’s gonna fry that aft engine…again…” and start swearing through gritted teeth.

 

 

 

 

Once the rumble settled down and Rexxee commed back in a new deeply melodic bass that it was going to take between one and two hours to get into Ogem safely, Finn brought Poe up some caff and the reports C’ai and Rey had transmitted.

 

_“What do you think she was doing there?” he’d asked Rose in the rattling galley._

_“I don’t know but I’m pretty sure she killed five First Order soldiers single-handed even before the bomb went off.”_

 

 

By that time the woman was awake again, though seriously high.  Those little blue “happy patches” Sheridan had slapped on her before snapping her broken bones back into place clearly packed a punch. 

_From below Finn had overheard her talking almost normally to Poe but now she was just sort of singing quietly to herself. She had a sweet girlish voice._

 He sat down beside his friend at the little data table and asked the question again, “Who is she?"

Poe looked over at the woman strapped to the bunk and seemed to consider his answer for a long minute.

"A pilot from Resistance Base on Yavin IV. A friend. Leia sent her out on a long-range clandestine mission right before the move to D’Qar." 

"Rose said that you told her she was "Rebel Intelligence.”

“Yeah, she’s that too,” he said, laughing a little, then explained how this young soldier and some Alliance veterans had been running a listening post on the edge of the Unknown Regions. She had made her way back on her own after Crait and had been on the run ever since, setting up comm with other Republic survivor groups and Resistance cells, doing sabotage and feeding Leia… _and him too it seemed_ … information whenever it was safe.

“Flight Corporal Kaylyra Andor,” Poe said, shaking his head, “ aka: Lighthouse, aka: LQ2, aka: Rogue One, aka:…Force only knows what else now.”

 

LQ2 was a code name they had been using for the unseen online ally that got them forged scan docs and flight data.Finn had heard of it but always assumed must be a group of high-level sympathizers at a data hub, or maybe not a person at all but some kind of hidden Republic AI that the First Order hadn’t found yet.

“Lighthouse” was also a name he had heard before.

 

 

_Dameron came down into the big hanger where everyone had gathered to tell them that Leia had passed…nobody ever said “dead”…Rey, D’Acy and Chewbacca stood beside him but Poe was the one who said the word, “Leia Organa passed from us three hours ago.”_

_Rose had started sobbing and Rey put her arms around her but Finn had just stood there._

_It was impossible. Leia was the center of everything._

_He couldn’t register anything, not sadness or fear or anything but numb disbelief until Rey reached out a hand to take his._

_“It’s all right,” she said, over Rose’s shaking shoulder, that new calmness in her voice that he could never understand. “It was just too heavy for her. She’ll travel lighter this way.”_

_There’d been tears in her eyes too though, she just didn’t let them fall._

_Ematt had stepped up and laid a hand on Poe’s shoulder._

_It wasn’t comfort, or not just that anyway. Ematt was always the tactical guy no matter what, no matter how bad it was, and he’d been saying, “How do we make contact now? Lighthouse, did she tell you? ”_

_“I don’t know, but she’ll find us,” Poe had said. “Somehow she’ll find us.”_

_At the time he thought they’d been talking about Leia or some kind of Jedi thing._. 

 

 

Temmin Wexley met them on the mirrored docking platform at Ogem. Poe must have commed ahead

“It’s really her.” Wexley reached over to help get the slab of door onto the hover-stretcher. The guy looked astonished.

Mellie the med-droid waved them all away, reciting medical-type jargon as she tossed a sterile field over the stretcher and hurried the sedated woman up the ramp toward whatever was serving as a med-bay, practically running over the toes of their boots as she made the turn.

“It’s Andor. Holy hell, Poe…” The big man seemed moved, almost choked up  “I half-thought you just made it up to make me feel better."

Poe Dameron slapped his old squadmates arm. "I told you Snap, one more spark," then followed Mellie at a run up the ramp.

Finn couldn't stay at Ogem. He shipped right out with Rose and Wexley within the hour, heading back to the Rion-8 belt.  

_On the long slow jumps, the Black Squadron Commander explained to Finn, “She was just a kid when I knew her, one of a bunch of raw recruits we taught to fly on mothballed Republic X-wings, graduated in our first squad of six. The rest of them all died between D’Qar and Crait.”_

 

 

 

 

 

Finn didn’t learn anything more about the woman until two weeks later on the abandoned smugglers platform in the Ripon belt. That was where she asked to interview him and got into a fight with Poe about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

PART 3

 

 

Kayly Andor wore a faded khaki flight suit just a little too big for her. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and fading purple bruises still showed on a pale left cheek.

_Maybe it was the suit but she looked only a few years older than him._

 

Even if the Resistance had a highly organized military structure, which it didn’t, she didn’t look like an Intelligence officer, at least not like he’d ever imagined one. 

 _How would he know of course?_ _Maybe that was the point. Maybe the good ones DIDN’T look like you expected._  

The First Order had Intelligence officers of course, obviously, had to... _right_?  But it wasn’t as if Infantry grunts ever saw them.

 

 _A memory came to him of being marched past racks and racks of surveillance drones as they were being being moved up ramps and onto deployment transfer craft._ _Greys guarded them and Tech officers with a dozen cylinders each had walked back and forth checking data boards._

  _After all, how  many dedicated Intelligence people did the Order really need in the field? Why waste resources on highly trained personnel and send them out to take risks when the galaxy was stuffed full of people who would sell anyone to anyone for aurodium and credits, selfish, cynical bastards who saw it all as a game. Had to be more cost effective to contract out, right?_  

_Oh he wasn’t going looking for the son of a bitch, not now. Now he had a bigger cause to fight for. Now he had people who needed him and that came first but if he ever met DJ again he was going to break the man’s neck with his own hands. That was a promise made himself in those dark days after Crait, sitting by Rose’s bedside, crowded into the Falcon with the last 60 traumatized soldiers of the Resistance._

 

Internal Re-Education and Re-Programming officers, those Finn knew. Every trooper knew about the black and silvers. If they took you away you never came back, or at least never came back the same. 

Whatever this woman was she wasn’t that.

 

He'd said ok at once. This wasn't the kind of thing to be nervous about.

Poe was the one who had protested.

Twenty minutes of non-arguing arguing then ensued and Finn couldn't get a word in edgewise. At times it reminded him weirdly of Solo and Leia but he couldn't figure out who was playing which part.

 

Their "discussion" was so involved that neither of them seemed to notice when he  took a seat on the step to the passageway.

BB-8 rolled over and parked next to him, periodically rolling his head around, tipping his receptors to listen in onPoe and “Intelligence” before turning back around to look at Finn tilting his head assemblyin a way that seemed almost sympathetic. 

They were talking about him like he wasn’t here.

_Rude was what it was. Even the droids thought so._

 

Poe was saying something about her being “a little hard-ass sometimes.”  

“For heaven’s sake what is the matter with you Dameron?”she answered back, “Finn is a bloody decorated soldier of the Resistance. Do you think I doubt him, or you, or Ematt, or or D’acy…or that I haven't read the General’s notes? She trusted him with her life an hour after she met him and that’s as good as it gets for a security clearance. While we have downtime here I’m proposing an information interview, that’s all.”

 

“You’re proposing or you and Portia are proposing?"

 

Everything went silent then.

_Oh boy. Had somebody had crossed a line?_

Finn stood up and peered around the corner and BB-8 rolled with him.

 

Poe and the woman were standing maybe a meter apart having what looked like a stare down.

 

Then the spy took a silver clip off her right ear and held it out to him.

“Poor Dameron. Do you not get this yet? If you’re worried about what Portia might say then you're more than welcome to sit with her. I promise you she isn’t interested in the same things I am.”

Poe hesitated then took the little thing from her hand and placed it on his own ear

 

Finn had already figured out that the earring was some kind of comm device back to her base but there was something intimate about the gesture too. 

 

_“I think maybe she’s his sweetheart or ex or something,” Rose had said._

_If it was true…wow. Not that he was anyone to judge because his life was unexpectedly complicated right now but….awkward._

 

“Cut this out, both of you,” he said, feeling like the grown-up in the room. “There’s no problem here Poe, I’ve been interviewed before.”

 

 _If he hadn't been completely messed up he'd have been appalled by the lack of security. Solo landed the Falcon and walked him straight into the base at D’Qar....actually it was more like_ _strode past him and forgot he was there, leaving Finn to follow._

_Poe had been the one to gift him that flight jacket and make personal introductions to the First Order's deadliest enemy. The famous terrorist and anarchist traitor who turned out to be a short woman in fatigues and elaborate grey-brown braids. General Leia Organa had looked him once over and declared, "We need your help sweetheart.”_

_At a dozen turns he’d expected suspicion, doubt, hostility but there had never been any._

_"How are you people still alive?" he'd wondered, pretty sure that they couldn't possibly stay that way_ _much longer._

_After that first meeting, while they readied the Falcon, he sat at a portable data table and give a statement to General Sakura and a mustached officer named Captain Tellon, told them his operating numbers, unit designation and capitol ship assignment, whatever he could._

_His whole life and it was nothing, just a mass of numbers._

 

_Unit 501 only even seen ground a handful of times, all his life since the age of 15 years 138 standard days had been spent marching around inside a box and and in simulations._

_Nothing had ever been real before Jakku._

_He knew every inch of Finalizer, his first ship so he drew them some sketches. His only regret at the time had been that because he was so newly assigned to the Supremacy he'd been unfamiliar with much beyond his assigned sections._

_Those boasts to Solo that he knew the layout of the Starkiller had all been lies of course. He had only been searching for Rey_

 

_When he woke up on the Raddus and told Poe he wouldn’t stay, that this wasn’t his army, and confessed that his only loyalty was to Rey, the pilot would have none of it._

_“This is where you belong,” he snapped and shoved back the battered jacket back into his hands. The tears had all been half-assedly re-sewn._

Finn had nothing to hide anymore. If this woman needed to hear something from him she was welcome to it. 

“I don’t mind, Poe.” he insisted. 

"There, see Dameron? I really think you’re doing your friend a disservice to imply he’d get ruffled by a chat with a 53 krookie pilot with a fresh limp. From what I’ve heard he guided Solo’s tactical assault team onto Starkiller Base, got into a short personal fight with Kylo Ren….admittedly on the losing end…and 120 hours later broke into a First Order mega-destroyer and busted his way out again with extreme prejudice.” 

_Well, it did sound a great deal more impressive if you put it that way._

 

“Thank you,” Finn said .

“You’re welcome,” the woman smiled and turned back to Poe. “Hell it’s not even an interview Momma Bear, thirty minutes tops, more of a chat.”

“You make it sound like there will be snacks.”

“We can have snacks.”

“Finn is my friend, and my officer,” he said stubbornly, “I sit in.”

“That’s your prerogative as senior Command, of course…” the woman said cooly, unfazed, “you’re more than welcome, I only ask that you let Finn answer for himself.”

 

In the end they sat down at the game table while Poe parked himself by the galley door, ostensibly working on reports and eating a sandwich.

 

 

 

—-

 

 

“Rose said you’re from the UR.”

“I am,” Kayly Andor  nodded and took a sip of the caff she'd asked BB-8 to please bring from the galley. “My parents were stationed on a border world and they never came back in after they were decommissioned.”

 _She meant from the last war, before he was born, probably before she was born. Holy shit._  

“Are you going to record this?” he asked.

“No need,” she answered, “This isn’t a data-driven conversation. The only goal is to get to understand each other.

“What do we talk about?”

 _Finn wished he’d asked for a cup of caff too._ _He wasn’t used to it and didn’t actually like it much but it would at least have given him something to do with his hands._

‘Well,’ she said, “The easiest way would be three questions.”

“What?”

“One of us asks the other three questions, on any subject we are curious about, and the person answering agrees to answer as truthfully and completely as they can. Then we switch.”

“That’s all?”

“Yeah. That usually gives a pretty good working picture.” 

_What? It sounded like a party game. He’d been expecting something more….strategic or something._

“Who asks first?

“Your choice,” she shrugged. 

_Shit._

“You first.”

“Ok.” she leaned forward on her elbows, chewing her lip a little as if thinking up the question as she spoke.

“You deserted, straight up as I understand, walked alone into a prison cell and pulled out a high security prisoner on the hope that he would fly you out…”

 

 _She was going to ask “Why?” wasn’t she?_ _Well, she’d hardly be the first or even the tenth person to to ask him that._

_Poe had asked first actually, as well as being the first person to see through his piss-poor knee-jerk lie that it had been some kind of political or moral stand._

_Three seconds passed, maximum before the prisoner’s eyes focused and you could just see him thinking, Bullshit, trooper._

_“You need a pilot,” he’d said._

_Oh fuck yes please he had_. _FN-2187 had never flown anything more complicated than a simple speeder not even in sims._

_The crazy rebel bastard had smiled wide, part of his lip bitten through and blood still wet on both sides of his head from the clamps. “Yeah,” he’d said with a gleam in his eye like this was the best plan ever, “we can do this.”_

_If it had been any other, saner, pilot they would never have made it out of the hanger much less to the ground. He knew that now._

 

But that wasn’t what she asked.

“…before that day did you ever hear of any other First Order personnel doing anything like that …. deserting I mean? Stories, rumors, anything?”

 

 

_No._

_“Have you ever thought of just running?” Slips had whispered, “Once we get to ground….”_   _bastard had been feverish from that bug he’d picked up on Kowak. They’d shut him up. That was the kind of talk that could get a whole squad sent to the reprogrammers. Zeros had gone down to the aide station on some pretext...a blister as Finn dimly remembered...and lifted an analgesic patch to slap on him and 2087 had shared his water ration. 2006 had been better in the morning. He’d never talked that crazy again._

_People muttered about ways to get easier duty, anyplace they thought there was no surveillance, or more “prestigious” duty or just duty that came with semi-private bunks or proximity to the better food stations on C deck._

_For a few seconds, when he’d called out Phasma as a self-serving coward in the Supremacy hangar, two or three troopers in the squad backing her had looked at each other._

_Come on brothers, he’d thought…but then she’d turned and shot them herself before turning the gun on him._

 

 

 

 

 

“No,” he said “I know some guys, maybe even lots of them, thought about running when they were sick, or tired, or crazy…but to talk about it out loud? That would have been suicide. The thing is....” he considered how best to say it. “In the sims there was never a way out, never anywhere to go, but they rigged all the sims, right?. Once you were on ground missions you could start to see how they didn’t have control of everything…and that's when you saw that the officers were cowards and screw-ups….guys talked about that.”

The dark-haired woman nodded.

 

“You told General Sakura that after you were deployed that you served for a couple of years on a Resurgent-class Battlecruiser before being assigned to the big fucking Dreadnaught, and had just those two assignments…basically…give or take,” she paused just a little and took another sip of her caff….

_She knows you bullshitted about Starkiller._

_It didn’t matter now of course…like Poe said, that was twenty stupid decisions back….but how did she know? Had she talked to Chewbacca? When could she have done that?_

…then went on conversationally, “but on either ship did you ever see anyone aboard, other than prisoners maybe, sentient or not, who wasn’t human?”

_Pressylla system. The sole surviving Abennedo negotiator was dragged away. Phasma saying, “No, we are not sullying the ship with that animal. Take him to the shuttle. He can be “negotiated” with there….easier to clean up after.”_

 "Not aboard ship,” he said, and found himself wincing. “Not even prisoners, that I ever saw. Non-humans were supposed to to be…dealt with..off platform. I think it might have been a regulation.”

Then he remembered something. “There was one time though, on GUHL-JO387O that a creature of some kind got aboard by accident.I’m pretty sure it hid inside one of the landers.” The woman raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t think it was super-sentient…but I couldn’t tell. It was purple and furry and kind of clumsy so I got the idea that it was like a baby or something.” He held his hands about 30 cm. apart to let her know about how big it had been, “That’s minus the tail. The poor thing was absolutely panicked but curious at the same time. It had these big purple eyes and only made cheeping noises." He couldn't help but laugh, "Wait until you meet the Porgs, it was like one of them only with six arms. It's got inside the walls, the air vents the wiring tubes, everywhere….I think it must have been able to flatten itself or something…ran around the officers quarters even. I chased the critter all around the ship for like twelve hours trying to get it out before anybody else saw it or we got too far from the surface. I chased it down a hallway and lost sight of it. Then, through a doorway I see it crawling  along the ceiling track-lighting rig in the main conference room," he shook his head at the memory, "the room was full of shiny high-level brass were having a big conference…Peavy Hux, Phasma, even Ren, not that I’d seen the face yet, he was still in the mask full-time then but there was no mistaking him. Little thing went right over their heads and out the other side. I stood stock still  next to the door guards and watched it in a sweat. I swear the little stinker stopped to look at itself in the reflections on their helmets, then scooted out the other side and back up the wall.” 

“Ok, I claim an extra bonus question. Did it get away?”

She had a nice smile.

 _He wondered what kind of dental care they had wherever she was from, off the maps in the UR._  

“Yeah!  I finally got it to come to me by offering it a piece of a ration bar, then snuck it into a sanitation tow and swapped rotation with a guy so I could get it out to the landing area and let it go an hour before lift-out.”

That made her laugh. 

 

Poe had stopped even pretending to read or eat his lunch and was watching them from the far side of the room.

 

“Ok, last question,” she said, leaning forward and chuckling, as if embarrassed “I grew up a little fangirl so I have to ask. Han Solo, what was he like?”

 

So he told her…what he saw anyway. About how damned grouchy the guy had been. A complete bad-ass and a complete screw-up at the same time. How choked up he’d gotten over the Falcon. How he'd told them he hadn’t believed in the Force or the Jedi when he was young but when Rey asked about all the wild stories, the old man had shaken his head and smiled like a guy remembering the first nebula he ever saw. “It’s all true. All those legends, all those fairy tales. Every damn word of all of them. I was there. It happened."

Finn told her how he’d worried about Chewbacca all the time and wound up being so decent to Rey after being a dick before...even offering her a job... and about getting them to Maz Kanata’s and how he and Maz seemed to go way back, How she had laughed at him, “Han, my boy!” while he rolled his eyes at her batshit craziness.

“I didn’t think about it until later because…well, the place was coming down and we were under attack but the guy was a real good shot. I got high targeting scores, that was the only reason I ever survived all my demerit drops without getting packed off to re-training, but the guy was good. He fired on the move with shit quality blasters and he never missed.”

She listened very carefully.

He told how after Solo saw that black shuttle on Takodana, saw Ren carrying Rey away, he forgot everything else or seemed to...boom...it was as if he forgot Rey, forgot Maz and probably would have forgotten Finn if he hadn’t been standing there yelling and screaming. 

He described the way he was with Leia, as well as he could How she seemed to be giving him crap all the time when you heard them talk but how when he’d hugged her on the tarmac she had pressed her face into his jacket and he had leaned over her because he was so much taller.

Solo flew like a verifiable lunatic… _honestly, Sheridan was an amateur of craziness compared to Solo. Somewhere there must have been an insane smuggler suicide pilot academy that they were all graduates of…_ and he had been intimidated by nothing. Not the First Order, Starkiller or the fact that they had no actual plan in the end, or Phasma or anything. He and Chewbacca had argued aboutcoats. Guy knew a freakish amount about base sanitation procedures too. When they shoved Phasma into the Large Waste Sorter and Compacting Transfer Access Hatch he’d actually run his hand over the control panel.

“Hell, it never changes,” he’d said. 

He was all business after they found Rey, rushed them down and scoped the space in just a few seconds, told them where to plant charges for maximum damage. The guy had clearly done some shit.

Then he forgot them all again…..or that’s what it seemed like. Chewbacca had called out to him and Solo had ignored him too.

 

Finn looked up at Poe then, unsure.

Andor followed his gaze, her eyes cat-green from this angle.

 _She must know already, right? If she was Resistance Intellegence now, if she’d met with Command Council…..hell maybe she’d known even before the rest of them, watching from out there in the UR_.

 Dameron nodded.

So he told her how Solo had shouted, “Ben!” and how it had echoed through the whole cavernous place, how he'd started walking toward the figure in black across the narrow service bridge.

Solo holstered his weapon before he walked out and he never even reached for it after.

The men stopped a couple of meters tops away from each other in the center and seemed to talk. Finn hadn’t been able to make out a word they said, they were far away and the acoustics were too awful. He thought he heard Solo say "...my son..." but he couldn't be sure.

After that Ren took the mask off.

“Rey knew what he looked like, Chewbacca must have too...when you think about it,” Finn admitted, “but it shook me a minute, I’d only seen him a half dozen times before and never with the mask off.”

He told her howSolo had stepped close and reached out his hand. His palm had been open, Finn said....he had been able to see that clearly, even from far across and above.... as if to touch the younger mans face or shoulder.

Ren stabbed him through with the red light saber and Solo fell from the walkway. It had probably been a hundred kilometers to the core, maybe further.

That was all there was.

 

 

The woman glanced down for the first time, at her hands around the now-cold coffee mug, then looked up meet his eyes again.  

“Thank you, Finn,” Kayly Andor said. 

Now it was his turn. 

By way of offering him a few minutes to think she walked back to the galley for a refill, pausing to say something to Poe as she passed. It sounded like a question.

"¿Estamos bien, Dameron?"

He took her hand, in an odd sideways way.

"Me alegra que seas uno de los buenos chicos Andor," his friend said.

It sounded vaguely familiar but it wasn't Basic.

_"Four absolutely universal baseline statements show up in all linguistic systems,” he remembered a gruff trainer saying when they were shown how to set the translation feeds on their helmets. “Yes/Affirmative” “No/Negative.” and “Bite me.”_

_Finn wondered who was saying which._

By the time the Intelligence officer got back he'd come up with three things he wanted to ask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "¿Estamos bien, Dameron?" = Are we ok, Dameron?
> 
> "Me alegra que seas uno de los buenos chicos Andor." = I'm glad you're one of the good guys Andor.
> 
> Finn is a character I set myself a challenge to write because he is very much a cypher...most of what I feel like I know about him I feel like I get from John Boyega's beautiful eyes and outrageously expressive jawline. Since the writers still seem up in the air about how they want to write for him and so little is sketched out in terms of the mechanics of how the the First Order operates it's hard to fill the gaps for Finn. Or so it seems to me. It occurs to me though in retconning things even before they are filmed, that since information is power, keeping the grunts ignorant is essential. Finn couldn't know much much about strategy and only the basic mechanics of the FO war machine. That said First Order is EVIL. To be an Everyman cog in that machine and come out with a functioning conscience is a miracle. Since Cassian and the team at Lighthouse are the only ones looking into the origins of the FO it makes sense our girl wants insight into what makes Finn unique almost more than actual data points. Poe being a little defensive of Finn is understandable too, he'll fistfight anybody who messes with his former guardian angel and after all the debriefs and reports on Ogem is also starting to realize that Kayly is her father's daughter when it comes to working the information she needs out of people, even the good guys. Be glad she's on your side boyo.


	47. The Trooper and the Spy: Part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Finn asks his three questions of Kaylyra Andor. New to this, he is mainly curious about Kayly herself and a world that has sheltered Imperial and First Order captives and deserters in the past. Some update on the conditions of the FO captives taken in "Fire."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small and started angsty then got a little funny while staying angsty on the outside edge. Poe and Finn are funny guys when they get going.  
> Kayly is not quite like the other Rebels.

 

 

PART 4

 

She stepped around Poe and BB-8…. _“excuse me, sweetheart,” she said, obviously meaning the droid. Dameron raised an eyebrow but Finn wasn’t sure she saw him_ …. and sat back down with another cup and a protein wafer.

 

Most of the few of them left alive in the core Resistance fell into a couple of categories.

People from the Republic were one. Some, like Emmat and D’Acy, were vets from the old war who’d joined Leia from the very first day and fought through it allwhile others were “victory kids”like Javos and Connix, or ex-ANR military who’d seen the First Order raids and deserted to fight with the General rather than stand down, like Wexley or Poe. 

Then there were people who’d joined from unincorporated worlds, the “refugees” who’d escaped to camps or relief centers in the Mid-Rim with stories of atrocities and forced evacuations that authorities either dismissed as regional territory disputes gone wrong or disbelieved outright. People like Rose.

Finally, though it was a number likely to grow, there were those like Chewbacca, Sheridan…and maybe Rey too...who joined because they despised the First Order and could not let it take from others what it had taken from them.

Finn supposed he was part of last group, although he was trying for more.

Kayly Andor seemed like she might be a little of each.

 

 

 

He tried to get straight in his head what he had wanted to know ABOUT rather than just ask something that didn’t matter or was classified like “Where have you been hiding?” or “How the hell do you get inside so many data banks from just a shuttle on the run?”

He supposed he could just ask straight out some of the burning questions from the galley like “Did you actually kill all four of the FO crew in that control room singlehanded like Rose said?” or “Have you and Poe really had sexual relations, because Javos bet C’ai one of the good foam pillows and three packets of legume crisps that you had?” 

What if he only got a “yes” or “no” answer?

Poe would be pissed off and embarrassed either way.

 

_There was one thing he’d wondered about though, even when Poe was introducing her._

 

“You said that there were other stormtroopers…First Order deserters... living on your planet.....Do you know what units they were from?”

_Stupid stupid question. What were the odds?  A million to one or close to it but he had to ask…_

  

“If you mean the First Order Stormtroopers there are three. Before Ardee surrendered three years ago she was Battalion 1030 and assigned to the Destroyer Dominion. Len was a Level One Strategic Navigation Technical Officer also from the Dominion. Deeb’s our senior FO alumni, as he’s the sole survivor of a crew that crashed and slaughtered anybody who crossed their path about thirteen years ago. 177 Assault Battalion he says.”

 

Finn shook his head.

 _None of it rang a bell._ _Was he disappointed or relieved?_  

 _1030 made sense. Rear units would have been doing clean-up on the edges._ _No one from F corps or his training cadre was likely to have gone rear, not three years ago anyway. The Dominion he’d never even heard of particularly but it was probably just Resurgent class D series. Dauntless, Decisive, Determinant…. 177 AB though? That made made no sense…AB’s were all 700-800, elite troops._  

Kayly Andor went on as if she knew what he was thinking.

_It was like trying to play poker with Rey._

“I can get you detailed accounts of their interviews from Portia if you want them,” she said and sipped her caf… _that shit was terrible, how could she drink two cups of it?_

 

“Are they prisoners?” _No. No. That wasn’t what he meant to ask._ “I mean do people…accept them?”

_Ah. This was hard. That wasn't how he'd meant to phrase it either._

 

That was the other set of categories within the Resistance.

People who thought about a future beyond the threat of the First Order….where they might live, what kind of life there might be for them….and people who didn’t.

Rose was one of the first kind, as was C’ai and probably….he hoped…Rey.

Emmat wasn’t though, and Finn was pretty sure Chewbacca wasn’t either.

 

 

The Intelligence officer seemed taken slightly aback and frowned as if considering before answering.

“Ardee was doing pretty well, when last I heard. She’s moved up to Oak Brook, a little human settlement on the Grasslands, to work on a wool goat farm. I’m not sure why, but Bodhi says she likes the goats. Now Len…”

 _Ok, so it was official,_ ** _everybody_** _rolled their eyes when talking about Level One techs behind their backs_.

“The Ladies of HarborTown told him he had to build one hundred houses before they’d take their eyes off him.Fifty there for the people who’d lost homes, livelihoods or kin when the First Order ship attacked and fifty somewhere else of his own finding. My father says he got taken on by some carpenter up at Still River Ford. If you want to know about previous generations of escapees from oppressive military regimes there’s Alliance Flight Commander Bodhi Rook, hero of Scarif and Endor, formerly a pilot in the Transport Services of the Army of the Galactic Empire but he's a special case. My friend Dex’s parents are old Imperial stormtroopers,….ok, not that kind of old, they’re my parents age…and dropped in about a year before Endor. They farm down in the Green River Valley and Deeb lives with them.”

She frowned.“Maybe we can talk about this more later. I’m actually looking for any insight we can get about Deeb, truth told. He’s is still pretty fucked up, mentally at least, even though he’s been out the longest. Anxiety way off the charts. Panic disorder symptoms, still. Memory gaps. Aphasia. The Sisters thought it was trauma at first because of the physical injuries but it seems to be more than that.”

 

_Multiple Re-evaluations? Reprogramming? More than one round was whispered to leave people…twitchy._

_But thirteen years ago? Who knew what it was like then? Especially way back in the rear_.

_Where was I then? How old was I? Was I even in the training camps yet?_

_Did I still have a name?_

_There was nothing there. He knew. He'd tried. Rey had tried to help but it was all gone. A blank wall._

 

_Wait._

“What kind of inuries? Was he was shot?” _Shit! This was tricky.“_ Wait, wait! That wasn’t one of my questions.”

“No, he aimed a blaster at my mother and Ava’s grandmother bit his hand off.”

 

“Say what?” that was Poe.

“Oh yeah,” Andor said, looking back over her shoulder, “You think you know our Ava? Just wait til you meet the rest of the family. Big hearts, sharp teeth.”

 

_Where the hell was this woman from? Insanely high-tech but no tech. No weapons but they’d somehow evaded at least two First Order incursions?_

 

If she was from a place that far behind the lines and the First Order HADN’T found them they must walk the same kind of razors edge out there that the Resistance did here, outnumbered and outgunned. Except with no place to run.

He thought of Rose’s stories of Hays Minor.

 _Lady, if I were your people I’m not sure I would take any live prisoners, ever._

 

“So…Rose said you’re from the UR, like her.”

“Is that really one of your questions?”

 _Shit._ “No..no..wait.”  _He could think of other things but…it had been driving him nuts since Ogem._

 

“What does LQ2 stand for?”

 

Kayly Andor laughed out loud.

"You really want to know? It’s a puppet story,” 

“Puppet story?”

“Yeah. It’s hard to explain but it’s a family thing originally. When we were very small, my mother used to make puppets and toys for us and we always made up stories and shows. My brother has apparently revived them for children in our village. Do you want to hear it?”

_Word was that her mother was some forgotten guerrilla hero in the battles before the first DeathStar. Finn tried to square that with puppet shows._

“Sure.”

“Oh I think we have to,” Dameron said, standing up now and no longer even pretending not to be listening.

 

“I should tell you this is actually the second story of the little queen. The first one is about how they choose her to be queen and how she and the rat become friends but she was so popular apparently Mama had to think up a second adventure .... “She sat up straight and folded her hands on the table. "These usually require a lot of  audience participation but we're all grown-ups here so...." cleared her throat and began:

 

Once there was a little green hill safe and dry in the middle of a great marsh. On it grew an apple tree and in its shade lived a little duck and a little rat and and a little wool goat and a little child who had been chosen by them all to be the queen of it.

The low marsh was full of wicked lizards but the apple tree gave them fruit and they were happy until one day the duck broke her wingand needed pine sap for the bandages to mend it so the little queen said “I will go to fetch some and be back before dark.” The lizards heard this and thought "She will get lost in the twisty marsh and when she does not come back in time we will steal the island and eat all the apples and the goat."

_"Why Just the goat?"_

_“Because the duck could fly away?” Poe said._

_“No wait, the duck has a broken wing, remember?”_

_“Good point pal, and what about the rat?”_

 

_“Shut up both of you, the rat can climb the tree and the lizards are stupid, let me finish.”_

 

The little queen set out at dawn and the clever rat gave her a bag of the ducks extra white feathers and leftover bits of eggshell. As she walked through the marsh she laid the bright things along the trail and so found her way back before dark. Everything was fine again until rat broke a tooth and they needed wax to stuff in the hole until the new one grew so the little queen set out again and the lizards lay in wait but this time the rat clipped some wool from the goat and the queen twisted it into a thread with her clever fingers as she walked, trailing it behind her so she could find her way back again. Now one day a storm came and a great branch of the tree itself cracked and they needed scavenger wire to wrap it back on tightly until it could grow together again so the little queen set out across the tricky marsh. Unable to think of anything else they all peeled some apples and cut them into snowy white bits for the queen to drop behind her as a trail to follow home…

 

_“Oh wait,” Finn said, “That’s not going to work, that’s a bad idea.”_

 

The ground was soft because of the rain so the apple bits sank a little and the lizards hiding in the mud gobbled up all the sweet pieces snip, snap. When it came time for the little queen to go back she could not find her path and the sun was setting fast so the duck flew up…

 

_“If the duck can fly now why doesn’t he just go get her and lead her back?”_

_Kayly Andor did that eyebrow-lift again._

_“You’re over-identifying Dameron. Besides, he’s a marsh duck and they can’t fly very far.”_

 

Anyway…..

_“That’s a bullshit duck then,” Dameron muttered._

**Anyway** …the duck flew up into the top of the tree and the rat climbed up beside him and they chittered and quacked a song as loud as they could while the goat banged it’s horned head on a log below as loud as a drum. The little queen saw that her trail had disappeared but she heard the sound of her island and followed it back through the marsh even as the shadows grew longer. Just as she had almost reached the safety of high ground and home the sun slipped behind the high reeds and a great blue lizard rose up in front of her.The goat turned around and kicked the drum log to her. The little queen caught it and bashed the lizard in the head then using the carcass as a bridge she ran right over its long spine and into the waiting arms of her people….and they all lived happy after.

 

“That’s it. Little Queen Part Two.”

“The “waiting wings of her people, you mean,” Poe corrected, “or maybe feet?”

“No, it would be paws,” Finn said, “or hooves?”

 

“Ok. You guys are idiots. We’re done here,” she said, friendly and businesslike,"Back to work."

Standing up from the bench she held out her open hand to Dameron. “If you’re done getting Portia’s commentary Poe, she and I need to go status-check equipment with Rose and 3PO topside. We’re zero-100 from the big holo-meeting.”

 

His friend stopped laughing, took the earring off and placed it in her palm without a word.

As her fingers closed around the tiny thing it seemed to Finn that Poe held onto her hand in a funny way for some very long seconds before letting go.

“Later,” Kayly Andor said quietly as she drew her hand back. “I’ll explain it later.”

 

_Finn still had no clear idea what was going on with the two of them but he was definitely laying his bet with Javos._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates way behind! I am ashamed  
> It's been a helluva few weeks and the fog on the roads is nothing compared to the fog in my brain. several half-finished chapters of Jetsam, as well as the (last few I swear!) of Fire are circling and Indigo is wrapping up as soon as I can find out a little more about sea-battles than I currently know....not that I will be at all accurate but I need more than BOOM)


	48. Until the Job is Done

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A soldier's tale.  
> Brought to Ea by Kaylyra, Kes Dameron, retired Sgt, First Division, Pathfinders, AARR stands with the rest of the team at Lighthouse and must grapple with news of a grievous loss.  
> Sgt. Dameron remembers a long-ago visit from Leia Organa to Yavin IV and some of the heart-breaking connections through the years between her family and his. Struggling to understand his son's battles he bonds....sort of.....a little, with Portia.  
> He watches strands of the shattered Republic and the Resistance start to come together but mostly he talks to his wife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, this is kind of sad, again. Set around the "Conference" upcoming between the New Resistance leaders and Lighthouse, facilitated by Portia. But of course there is really only one Resistance leader Kes Dameron is worried about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He checked the little heat-stove, turned down the bed and gave his damp head one more rub with the towel. Though the little window across the workshop “yard” he saw that Rook’s light was out.

_Good. Poor guy needed some sleep. He’d taken double shifts in the Tower yesterday to get ready and even though you could technically bunk up there nobody but the Mems seemed able to actually do it soundly. Clean consciences, he expected._

Down in the Stone House there was still a glow through the curtains. Sarge and the Major must still be up….probably talking to their boy. Galen was setting off for the coast again as soon as things were settled here.

Kes Dameron was mulling over going with him.

Maybe it was time to see the country. There was Rook’s offer to consider too.

Boots set up by the bed, toes out, he took the locket off from around his neck, kissed it and placed the little round thing carefully on the wooden stool he was using as a bedside table, stretching out the chain to lie straight. Then he dimmed the solar lamp, ducked his head under the eaves and climbed under the blankets.

Lying in the dark he looked at the low ceiling and talked to his wife.

 

 

 

_I finally saw him today… our boy, babe. Just a holo, but a real clear one._

_Saw him and heard his voice, real-time._

 

_Seriously, you’d have been proud of how well I managed to hold it together._

_I doubt I totally fooled the Major….Cassian...but he’s Intelligence, it’s a high bar to cross._

_It was hard as hell but it felt like a couple of the straps on my heart got loosened._

 

_He looks good anyway, Poe. Way better than I was afraid, a little thinner in the face maybe. Serious mostly. Older. Just a little like your dad._

 

_He’s the sole surviving Flight Command right now._

_It’s “Lateral Command” the Major says, he likes to be formal but all I could think about was Merrick and Mandine._

 

 

 

_Leia’s gone._

_Depending on how these things work you already know that but…damn, damn it babe…it was an awful kick for us here._

 

_Kayly told us last night. She came on alone through an audio channel and said she had waited to tell us something because she wanted to do it direct, not in code or relayed through the AI._

 

_“Papa,” she says...and everybody knew right then it was going to be something rough because she doesn’t call him Papa “on duty” normally....neither of the kids do. They don’t say anything or they say “sir.”_

_The Major never flinches but it hurts him a little every time, it has to. It’s like both of us have a glass wall between us and our kids now....._

 

_“Papa,” she says, “the General is gone.”_

 

_There were about six of us in the room and you could have heard a pin drop._

_The Major....Cassian...was the only one who could talk at first and he just said, real quiet, “How?”_

_The AI..Portia…she was showing as the woman with the long black hair...sat right down at the table then.....which she doesn’t do very often Sarge tells me …and answers him, “The people with her believe the cause to have been natural.”_

_According to Kayly, Poe and the others say her heart just gave out._

 

_She goes on like she’s half talking to herself, sounding like no machine ever, “There was no sign of cardiac weakness or disease when I spoke with her three years ago but she has, according to reports given to Kayly, been subject to extraordinary physical and physiological strain.”_

 

_Yeah._

 

_Rook took it hard and little Ava was crying._

_“She wanted to come with us,” the poor kid kept saying, “I could tell she did. She told Kayly that Cassian-ally used to be her teacher and Ancient Portia and the Sisters could have given her good advice...maybe then...”_

 

_I told her later what you always told me, that “maybes” are like mynochs. They’ll suck the life out of you. You have to cut them off and go._

 

_You know what? The next day everybody here, the whole village, started tying these little grey ribbons on their skirts or around their wrists. That’s their color for mourning Sarge told me._

_And they all kept coming up to me to pat my hand or pat me on the back….that means “How are you?” I’ve learned…and say, “I am so sorry for your loss,” like I’d lost kin or something._

_Which I guess I have, we have…all of us._

_They’re all gone now. Luke, Han, Leia…..The heroes of the Battles of Yavin and Endor. It’s just us grunts now….oh hell, I keep thinking about Chewbacca._

 

_You and Leia got pretty close on some of those missions I know, not that you said much about it at the time....shit, I didn’t even know you'd been assigned to her until Solo and I were pinned down on Lothal during that sabotage raid. We’re sitting there in the dark while the minutes tick off waiting to find out if the damned explosive is going to go off or not and he says “So, Dameron, I guess our girlfriends are hanging out, eh?”_

_That guy. Not a big picture thinker and never claimed to be. I heard Emmat call him “General Solo” on an assault once and he said, “Kid, I agree to be the fucking General of the 500 meters between here and that control tower everything else is your job.”_

_He had several screws loose in funny places but when he was “on” nothing stopped him. Never met a door he wouldn’t go through._

 

 

_You kept stuff close baby._

_Top of the list of things I didn’t find out ’til after was that you were the first one who knew she was pregnant._

_Got that straight from her when she came out to the farm. Remember?_

_It was the start of that second year after you were gone._

 

_Old deaf Duck started barking so I opened the door and there she stood, Leia Organa._

_Flew herself in, landed a sweet little TC-2 on the vine field and walked the mile up to the house. No fanfare, no notice, no security, nothing._

_I remember thinking, oh look, it’s the Princess, thank the Force I’m wearing pants._

_Ha. Truth told I’d probably slept in my clothes because Poe wasn't home. School field trip._

 

 

_Looking back I must have presented a pretty rough scene._

_I’d started climbing out of the hole by then but it was a long ladder.… I still haven’t gotten to the top have I?_

 

 

_Her story then was that she’d been on her way from someplace classified to someplace else classified and snuck off the flight plan because she wanted to see how Luke’s tree was doing._

 

_What could I do but put on a clean shirt, shave fast and take her out there?_

_She wanted vids of it from every angle.... for him, she said._

_Skywalker was busy trying to set up his Jedi school and since the seedling had come from that huge old Jedi temple she said he’d even talked about bringing his students to Yavin IV to see it some day._

_I showed her all around the farm after._

_She’d even brought sandwiches with her from the ship….like somehow she knew I wouldn’t have any food in the house except crumbles and fruit._

 

 

 

 

_While we were out there Leia told me the whole story of how Crakken sent you in solo for a dark extraction and you wound up on the ground helping her shoot her way out of some bad deal...I forget where she said it was ... but as soon as the ship hit FTL she bolted out of the cockpit into that little head under the A-wing ladder and started tossing like a rookie._

_Tried to pass it off as g-reaction but you saw through that pronto and started scolding her “Girl! First trimester is the worst. You must stay hydrated!”_

_Nobody else even knew yet she said except the med-droids because she was only like five weeks in and she sat on the deck crying and saying stuff like “What am I thinking? I can’t have a baby. There’s still a fucking war on. How can I be this crazy, be this selfish?”_

_She didn’t tell Solo for weeks after, she told me which seemed rough but...you know… that was her._

_You were the only who didn’t assume straight out that her pulling her implants wasn’t some kind of shock thing, that it wasn’t all about Alderaan.….helped her get cleaned up and talked to her like she was just another woman pregnant in wartime._

_That meant a lot, she said, and got her through a lot of rough times after._

_You even told her about Poe….which floored me because you never told your squad…and said she wasn’t crazy. “In the middle of all this bullshit you found hope and so much love in your heart that you need something...somebody...to hold it. You feel like you have to stake a claim to the future …physically. Some humans just have to do it this way…some always have.”_

_Every time I think I know everything about you I find out more._

 

 

 

_We just sat out there in the shade of the tree for a while._

_It was nice. I didn’t go out there often enough in those days. The damn thing was already huge then, like 24 meters and it damn near doubled again._

_“Was” I have to say now because the bastards blew it to hell._

 

 

_If I want some kinds of answers fast, straight and no chaser I’ve learned to go to the Sarge…Jyn, I mean…or the AI, Portia._

_I needed to know about Yavin about the farm and the rest of the neighbors._

_Sarge told me that everybody....except for a few hold-outs from those co-housing communes on North Coast Settlement, who headed into the jungle....had been evacuated to about ten different worlds andmade Portia show me satellite maps._

_“Blinks” the AI calls them because they won’t risk constant direct surveillance…..paranoia about being traced…..but damn, they are awesome maps for all that, at least as good as the ground scans we got at Jakku.._

_They parked a destroyer and sent down landing parties, mostly around Massasi Base and the Southern fuel depots. Where I am sure they found squat._

_They also sent in drones to search our house._

_“Why?” I asked her._

_Portia was looking like some shave-headed teenage construction worker at the time…_

_Everybody here is full chilled with the image-switching but I swear I still slightly freak out every damn time…._

_“He was looking for your son.”_

_I didn’t ask who “he” was._

_By appearances they’d left everything undamaged on the outside, but Portia said they booby-trapped the house and outbuildings._

_It's ok, babe. Poe knows better than to go back there and when I get home…well if there’s one thing yours truly still knows how to do it’s disable 4003 kinds of EDs._

_They pulled out then, just parked a few satellites in system and went on. What's the point of positing watch on a mostly empty moon? Luke’s beautiful tree was ash and splinters though._

 

_It never did blossom again after the first couple of years._

_“Force tree?" What the hell did that even mean?  I told Luke at the time I thought it was something likeEmmenopterys Gigantica._

_A little research showed up some varietals that stay fertility dormant for centuries. Supposedly that’s how embryonic stasis drugs were originally invented on Abenedo. It was as a botanical deriviative. Who says farmers don’t read, eh?_

 

_“I’m so sorry,” Portia says, “It was lovely.”_

_“Luke said it was the last of it’s kind,” I told her and I swear she rolled her eyes then…she looked like a little kid with curly hair that day._

_“No,” was all she said._

 

_They’re idiots anyway. If it’s anything like Emmenopterys Gigantica it doesn’t have to only germinate from seed. Under the right conditions a whole tree can re-grow from a tiny root fragment_

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_She could only stay for a few hours that time and looked disappointed that Poe was not there, so I showed her around and she looked at his room….Force knows what the house looked like…. and threw sticks off the porch for poor old Duck, dropped them was more like._

_When I asked about Solo she said he was good but that political life…. as in the ratio of doing-things to thinking/talking-about-doing-things…. was hard on him._

 

_I told her to bring him and say fuck it to the Senate…..Ok I’m pretty sure I didn’t say “fuck it” to her but you know what I mean…to get some time off on building-the-New-Republic and bring Han and their son to visit._

_“They’re not even two years apart, our kids.” I told her, “you should bring him here, if we’re lucky they’ll get along. Poe can teach him to climb the really big trees and I’ll teach him how to run a harvester.”_

_She laughed and said they would before she took off._

 

_Its not as if that was the last time I ever saw her but we never talked one-on-one after._

_She got down off the stage and hugged me at Poe’s Academy Commencement ten years later. I got some serious stares for that, baby….Antilles laughed his ass off and said “Where’s mine?” … but I didn’t get to talk to her because there was a whole line of dignitaries._

_Her son was dead by then….or so we thought….and I figured maybe it was just too hard for her._

_After the “scandal” she resigned and when they started the Resistance training camp at the old Massassi Base she came and talked to people at those huge community meetings, she shook my hand at the one in our sector but I couldn’t catch her alone._

_It was like she wouldn’t look me in the eye._

_I thought it was because she was under so much stress and I didn’t want to put extra pressure on Poe._

 

_“…her heart gave out…”_

_Her heart got ripped out….again and again and again. Who else could have taken it as long as she did?_

 

 

_Then the AI popped up next to me as somebody else, a little old lady, while her other AV, surfer boy,was with everyone else setting up the room. She let me know that Kayly Andor told him the basics...that she found me and I'm good and absolutely safe but he's still real firm that he's got to stay blank on anything else._

 

_Portia says that she and Kayly are looking out for him and hopefully the situation will improve to the point where he’s “ more confident about the security protocols” whatever that means, and that in the meantime he’s “compartmentalizing as a coping strategy under extreme stress” and I told her, “Yes Ma’am I’m familiar with the concept.”_

 

 

_Remember how the v-school took all the kids over level three to the Museum at Yalerri every year at the end of term for that live sleepover Archeo-camp?_

_I actually chaperoned when he was in 8th level._

_It was great stuff, they let them help out on a dig and do scanning projects and ecological testing._

_That’s why he wasn’t home when Leia came. He’d missed the first trip so I made sure he got to go the next year. I figured he needed to be with friends, or at least have some distraction but it was the first time we’d been apart more than one night since you know….and I remember how he kept comm-texting every ten minutes._

_Good so far. Window seat_

_Halfway there_

_You ok Pop?_

_They’re flying us in on a Lambda C-24 and the guy is using too much stick_

_These ruins are AWESOME but too many bugs_

_The protein nuggets are shaped like triangles. Coincidence or sick joke?_

_Don't forget to eat dinner, ok?_

_You taking good care of Duck?_

_Duck taking good care of you?_

_Reggy Gorman just puked he ate a bug on a dare_

_ Ok. Lights out now talk to u tomorrow. _

_ Te extraño _

_ArOne says you’re still up._

_ Go to bed. Ok Pop? Te amo. _

_He shouldn’t have felt like he had to do that. A ten year old shouldn’t have been worrying like that. He should have been hiding candy in his sleeping bag and greasing the tracks on the chaperone droids, not reminding his dad to eat._

__

_I said something to him once a few years ago about how bad I still felt about those times and how unfair it was and he only laughed like he does and said, “Pop, it’s not like worrying about you and being a normal doofus kid were mutually exclusive. We survived and we took care of each other, like Mom wanted. I also learned to multi-task. Great training for a pilot."_

 

_I know why he feels he has to do things this way now._

 

_They captured him before the Starkiller Assault, took him on a destroyer and held him for almost 15 hours…that much I got out of Kayly and Rook confirmed, under pressure……15 hours._

_These hijos de puta copy the Empire like fan-babies right down to the mass slaughter and gaberwool suits._

_I shouldn’t have asked, because he doesn’t need me to know this shit babe but I did, even though I couldn't say the word when it came down to it.._

_“Did they hurt him?”_

_“Yes,” the AI…Portia…says._

_Some kinds of bad things are easier to hear from machines. Some stuff would just gut you too bad if you heard it from a person._

_“Your son is a very resilient person Sargent Kes Dameron,” and she says, looking straight at me “I would say, quite remarkably so.”_

_A stormtrooper who wanted to defect got him out and they escaped….that’s a guy I want to meet._

_“You’vetalked to him? Directly, was what you said,” I asked._

_“When necessary,” she says._

_I'm pretty sure that means the ear-clip._ _Rook, Major Andor and the Sarge all share one here….some kind of off-books neural linktech. He must be using the one Kayly had._

 

_“Tell him it’s ok. Tell him I understand and to do what he needs to, that I’ll be waiting for him when the job’s done.”_

 

_She has the old lady nod her head._

 

_Some things you have to hide until it’s safe to think about them. Who knows that better than us? But I was always there waiting for you babe, and you for me. Make sure he doesn’t forget, ok?_

 

_It was weird to sit through that whole meeting out of sight, able to see and hear but not talk, to him or to anybody, but the….Cassian ok’d it._

 

_Almost seemed as if it would have been way above my pay grade back in the day._

_I’m so scared for him I can’t think straight sometimes but I was so proud of him._

 

 

_It’s not our army anymore….or maybe in a way it’s our army like it was in the very beginning. Before Yavin, even before Scarif….back in the days before Dantooine maybe._

 

_Emmat looked good…a lot of grey but that was the only difference. I don’t know what it is but it can’t be clean living….and D’Acy from Communications. Did you ever meet her?_

_Snap Wexley…Nora’s boy….and a cadre of Mon Calmari, old and young. Three Senators, one in a damn chain if you can believe it and who knows how many listening…like me, without saying anything?_

 

_There’s a few hundred of them and they are holding on, rallying who’s left while Mon Cala rebuilds a fleet. More every day._

 

 _The Sarge…Jyn…. says that’s the thing we’ve got to remember. This isn’t the old Rebellion and  if we think of these guys as being the Empire, as being some unstoppable giant we’re buying into their game. W_ _e’ve beat better than these overdressed thugs. The Mon Calmari, as you can imagine, agree._

_She must have been a pistol at Massasi Base._

_I remember talking to people who heard the speech she gave before Scarif. Most of them boiled it down to “Screw this noise and suit up. it’s time to fight.”_

 

 

 

 

 

_Tomorrow or the next day I’ve got to figure out a way to fight from here. I always made a better soldier than a houseguest._

_I love you._

_Stay with him._

_Te extraño, baby._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shara and Leia knew each other...were friends during the war. In a better kinder galaxy their sons, close in age, would have likely been friends. It's just one of the many heart-breaks
> 
> Te extraño = I miss you


	49. The Council- Part One: Remembrance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first "virtual" meeting of leaders from rebel cells and Resistance survivors that will form the New Alliance. A Mon Calmari captain and veteran of the last attends from the deck of his new battleship and wonders how to tell his young crew what may lie ahead. Also aboard is a retired Intelligence officer who sees faces he had thought he never would again,

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This meeting is at the center of lots of stories across the platform and will get mentioned from many points of view. Lots of talking and thinking about talking. My love for the Mon Calmari knows no bounds and neither as it turns out does my love for the internal dialog of General Davits Draven.
> 
> Leia Organa rocks even in flashback.

 

 

 

 

CMDR. STOL MEKKAN/ Mon Cala Resistance Fleet

 

 

_Hers was a beauty born of necessity._

_The cowards of the First Order could not track what they could not see._

 

_Her skin sparkled with millions of tiny diamonds, nano-tech scales that could shift and reconfigure in HS to mimic the energy displacement outlines of natural stellar effects, distortions, even other ships. In addition she carried storage cells of depleted Clouzon-36 gas that could be dumped prior to jumps to baffle conventional scans._

_A timid creature remembered from the rural oceans of her native South finally brought a desperate designer the inspiration that enabled the Mon Calmari shipbuilders to defy the hyperspace tracking of the murderers, for the_ _clever soft-bodied Piovre was known to hunt unseen beneath the noses of predators many times her size by means of masterful concealment._

_They called her Remembrance. She was the first to slip free from a dry dock platform hidden in the OHS-213204 field and two siblings followed behind her, christened Loyalty and Return. Their first action was to turn about and burn their birthing cradle behind them before jumping separately into hyperspace to vanish._

_Other ships would follow, larger and stronger perhaps but she was the first. Whatever came after that honor could never be taken from her._

 

 

"Transmission platform upload on for go in 06:37, sir.”

"Security stasis report!”

"Signal containment at maximum, sir." Larrel called out from the Shield Control station.

"Firewall filters at prime sir," came the answer from Communications.

….but..”

_Oh Force._

“But? but what Prekev?" 

"Sir, I am not comfortable,” his Comm Officer said.

_This again._

Lt. Prekev was a pale green Northerner whose pronounced jaw sometimes made it look as if she were clenching her teeth.

_A brilliant code designer and intuitive linguist who could argue a C3 protocol unit to a standstill in 23 biological and mechanical languages, she had cracked into a Bothan security feed while a first term University tad and nearly caused a diplomatic incident._

Commander Stol Mekkan of the Mon Cala Resistance Fleet suspected that right now she actually was clenching her teeth.

 

“Noted, Lieutenant,” Mekkan sighed.

Silence fell across the bridge….mostly.

_Prekev was too good an officer to speak further on her own and would never question an operation once under way but he was going to have no peace from that faint grinding sound until he let her say her piece._

 

"For the record then, what is the cause of your discomfort Lieutenant?”

The officer swiveled in her rig. “Feeds shouldn’t be able to remain stable through this much interference sir. The skill required to link this many repeaters and parasite boostersis...well, beyond impressive in and of itself but to do it with incoming data from six separate transmission points without signal degradation....it’s just....it’s hinky sir.”

_Was this some kind of new slang?_

_Children. They have sent me out here with children._

"Lighthouse is capable of uniquely complex realtime links under the right conditions," the old Republic Intelligence officer said from the mezzanine. "We were a little unnerved ourselves the first time it happened just prior to the battle of Hoth but sometimes you have to learn to trust what you can't quite understand." 

"This is being run by a team trusted under fire by Ackbar and Leia Organa Lt. Prekev," Mekkan assured his officer, "the oath we swore was to reform the Alliance and defend the ideals of the Republic from those who would undo the legacy of those heroes. "Hunky" or not we must find a way to take hands with others who stand for that cause of unity and freedom."

The Lieutenant nodded dutifully before turning her eyes and her rig back to station

_They were young, so many among his crew._

 

He must speak to his bridge crew when this was done. One way or another a New Alliance would begin in earnest here.

 

He debated what story he would tell them to help them understand what lay ahead.

Perhaps he would speak about a senior seminar he had taken at the University of the Central Shelf with the less than inspiring title..."Inter-Species Philosophy and the History of Galactic Relations." 

 

_Palpatine declared himself Emperor only a few months before. There had been a"purge" of the Jedi on Couruscant, but there were no Mon Calmari among the Jedi._

_Protests and demonstrations had broken out all over campus but young Mekkan, struggling to hold onto a class ranking in the Energy Sciences track that would ensure him a good field placement, had told himself he had no time now for politics._ _He had already planned his career for himself in Energy Systems Management right down to the tile colors on his first office floor. It had all seemed so far away._

 

_No instructor was listed. “TBD" the list read and it was hellishly scheduled first session each day for two weeks. The course was required or else Stol Mekkan would never have been there._

_Oh how they had all groaned, expecting an agonizing one hundred and ninety minutes times twelve that surely no amount of caffeine lozenges would get them through without demerits for snoring._

_When the adjunct instructor appeared on the rig, a slim rosy-shelled Equatorial who gave his name as Gail Ackbar, they opened their data pads only to find access to the wordy assigned text blocked._

_"Don't get your hopes up," he told them, "you'll read it at the end, by which time you might actually be able to make use of it. For now, let's devote ourselves to figuring out if your brains are half as flexible as your back plates. You..." he pointed to a big male named Scotus in the front "tell me three things you think you know about Bothan society and how they might have influenced that worlds refusal to take sides in the so-called “Clone Wars?"_

_The thick-muscled polo player’s jaw had dropped._

_The class was wildly popular. Well-travelled, witty, kind but demanding, the former Navy officer was ruthless in calling out whatever he saw as lazy or parochial thinking but willing to hear out any point of view if the speaker supported with clear evidence. Signore Ackbar instructed them to watch news feeds, conduct interviews, bring in readings or texts of their own. At times he lectured but mostly he insisted they debate, formulate questions themselves and then critique their own answers. Argument was even tolerated....shockingly....within respectful guidelines and the ten days of the intensive course passed like an autumn current. The class changed his way of thinking in ways that would not become clear to him until long after._

  _The same note was attached to every returned final exam:_ _"It is all too possible for persons to visit ten thousand worlds, sail the Galaxy from edge to edge and yet remain ignorant of the fellow souls within it and the complexities that bind us together. Whatever the Force holds in store it is your duty not to be one of that number."_

 

 

 

 

He might tell them how three years later he had embraced his nanny and eleven nearest brothers in farewell while silent alarms sounded through the city.

_In what would come to be called the Great Escape, twelve hours before the Imperial "defense" of Mon Cala closed the last gap in the blockade, he was smuggled off-world along with thousands of ships and hundreds of thousands of people deemedto have essential skills to build the first secret fleet of the Rebellion._

_Beloved Hellva and all but one of his brothers would die under the Occupation before his return._  

No, likely they knew that story having heard variations of it, all of them, from sires and dams, teachers and friends. Having lived it themselves when the broadcast sounded across Mon Cala, telling them the New Republic was ashes and the ships of something called the First Order were but hours away.

 

For a certainty he would tell them how he was transferred to the flagship Profundity as an engineer and how he served there under a hard swearing Northerner named Raddus and learned what courage was.

"Caution and discipline keep a ship alive in the pack but when a gap opens in the ice only experience and faith will see it for what it is and only courage sustained will drive it through.”

 

_For almost two years these brave young sailors had hidden while the New Republic they thought they would grow old in burned and vanished around them. Courage they had. Caution they had learned. Now they needed to learn trust. Trust in themselves, in their ship and the others who would join hands with them._

 

Stol Mekkan would tell them about Raddus sealing himself in on the bridge to hold that beautiful but dying queen’s angle for as long as he could on manual, keeping the escape ports open for a precious few seconds more, of how he and the others below decks crowded into the handful of operational escape shuttles that most knew would be their last voyage. He would recall for them the glimpse he had from the shuttle window before the fire shields took it dark of fighters in the skies above Scarif as the ship heeled over, sacrificing themselves to buy the fleeing ships a path. Those unremembered fighters had saved not only his life and that of the handful of Profundity’s surviving crew but likely the Tantive II as well by their actions…though they could not have not known that. 

He would remind them again of Rogue One and the faith it took to begin something you would never see the end of….and the greater faith required to begin again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“General, are you sure you do not wish a set up for transmission? There is still time.” It seemed remarkable that the officer would not wish to participate in the Council, at least to ask questions.

Shollan had intimated, there might well be people here he knew and had served with. 

“No,” the man said, “There’s nothing I can contribute at this stage. If you like I can verify identities but…it’s best I listen from the shadows.”

 

  

The human was a dour fellow and somewhat elderly from what Mekkan could tell although the poor things barely lived to be one hundred, so you hated to guess.

 

 

 

_One of the humans of the Rescue and Transport Division, Doren Tonc, heir of a hero and now one in his own right, brought the man in himself, across First Order lines apparently at the direct order of LQ2 themselves._

_[_ _AARR Intelligence retired_ ]  _read the file,_   _[high-ranking senior analyst]_ _Well and good, Mekkan had thought, but I am trying to get a combat ship operational on her maiden voyage. What exactly will need analyzing?_

_There was a string on the transmission that indicated he should contact Admiral Shollan by cloaked audio as soon as the human boarded at the fuel transfer._

_“Does the name Draven mean anything to you?” Shollan asked. Mekkan had been forced to admit it did not._

 

 

 

“Sir,” Prekev said, “Clear to transmit and receive cloaked signal live-feed in 00:20

Commander Mekkan locked his platform and set the gravity sufficient to standIt was only polite and firmness seemed a good thing to project. His First Mate, Kortina, did the same. 

He glanced over at Davits Draven, but the man only shook his head. He had not changed his mind.

“Lt. Prekev,” he said. “Stand up.”

“Sir?”

“Once we start this transmission will continue until it is cut off. You will have nothing to monitor besides your own discomfort. Stand up and meet our allies. I will value your input.”

“Yes…yes, sir.” She dropped down to the platform and locked on.

“Sir,”Tarrel said, “We are on in 04…03..02..01..”

The black of the holo platform turned matte making the vast compartment seem dimmer.

Forty people appeared on his bridge.

He knew without being told that many more stood behind them.

His first thought was, _We are not alone._

He had known that of course. They had made contact with LQ2 only weeks after the Assault, received messages from Resistance Command intermittently over the last several months but to see….to see made it real to the heart, as his nanny used to say.

_So many..Abenado, Sullestan, Gungan, Verpine,…dozens of humans…dear Heaven who were those small hairy people, and that large one?_

Then his second thought came and with it a chill.

_Leia Organa is not here._

 

 

DAVITS DRAVEN

 

 

[Intelligence/Surveillance Command Team/Lighthouse Station] 

Four people. No names.

That flicker of identifying text  was all the participants would receive. Resistance Commandknew who "Lighthouse" was individually of course and he was authorized to provide information to the Mon Calmari but at this point it was a needless security risk for most of people here to be given details that held no meaning to them.

_Rogue One had been forgotten everywhere but Mon Cala and a handful of pockets of the New Republic. The details of Operation Lighthouse had been known to only a handful within AARR and New Republic Intelligence and all but himself and Organa were dead now. Besides, what had they ever really known?_

_“Adjacent to the Modell System” Rook had reported long ago, which meant precisely nothing._ _“Adapative mixed population Low-tech. Level 1.7 N/Offs capability” had been Andor's cryptic designation thirty rears ago. No doubt his idea of a joke._

_Draven had a feeling that the mysterious “Portia” not only didn't fit on any standard tech-assessment scales but that she was fully capable, to borrow one of Thorn’s phrases, of rolling them up and smoking them._

 

The clarity of the transmission was amazing. Were it not for the slightest hint of transparency you would think these people were actually in the room. _“Hinky” indeed._

 

Four of them, that surprised him.

Rook, Jyn Erso, Andor himself and a younger man.

_“...my brother and I...”  Kaylyra Andor had said._

The son then, Galen Andor.The resemblance was striking.

It was as if he were looking at a forty year old image of a young agent they had sent to Verujannsi III.

 

_Bloody hell. This was just going to be flashbacks within flashbacks wasn’t it?_

 

 

 

 

Everyone looked older although they all still had their hair. Andor’s was still even mostly dark although his beard was streaked with grey. There were lines around his eyes but those had come early. Draven remembered noticing after Endor…incongruous on such a young man. Andor had grown into them now.

 

 _When setting this up he had asked “Portia” whether any of the feeds would be altered and the reply on the data screen had been positively snippy, [_ _No. I would not participate otherwise._ _]_

 

A white collarless shirt and dark blue jacket. Plain. Dignified. It took a moment for Draven to realize who Andor’s carriage and appearance reminded him of although he was fairly certain it wasn’t Jeron Andor.

 

_Only a handful of images of the father had survived. Draven had no memory of what they looked like, only of handing them over when the boy asked. There had been adolescent mine worker’s ID, the film image from a faculty badge, Imperial University of Carrida, and a degraded holo still from a housing application form._

_“Is this all?”_

_It hadn't been, quite. There were a few small blurry stills lifted from security vids of the protest march and at least one autopsy report. Crakken had given the fourteen-year old access codes for those too._

_There would be too many lies ahead, Aerin said, the boy deserved truth…even ugly truth…as often as they could give it to him_

 

Bodhi Rook looked damned good for a fifty eight year old man whose mere survival was a footnote in several medical textbooks, dark hair cropped short and sprinkled with grey but otherwise very tan and very fit.

_Thorn would demand reports. Hopefully Rook would move his right hand a few times because Draven was sure he’d be grilled on range of motion later._

 

He texted the names by position to Mekkan’s closed comm.

 

Confirmed:

Bodhi Rook dfc11:05/3m

Cassian Andor dfc12:01/3m

Jyn Ersodfc01:02/3m

Galen Andor dfc11:00 (child of above)

 

The Mon Calmari Commander glanced down at his display and then up quickly, startled.

“Stella del mare…” he swore softly.

 

_Mon Cala had never forgotten. They were legends there._

_Andor and Erso were among the martyred dead of Scarif._

_An impressively large number of Infantry vets remembered Bodhi Rook….to the troops pinned down on Garaim and Jakku the evac pilots who brought them out under fire were the hand of the Force made visible._ _He’d been awarded the Gold Starbird after Jakku…although Command knew it was really for Scarif. Too little too late to make up for all the heroes who hadn’t stood on that platform at Yavin IV…..but he’d never returned to accept it._

 

_Andor’s name was only recorded in two places, that beautiful monument on Mon Cala and an illegally scratched column that hopefully still stood in the back recesses of a wrecked temple on Yavin IV._

_Davits Draven knew because he had carved it there himself._

 

_Jyn Erso was remembered on Mon Cala as a martyred warrior and prophetic heroine but her name and her fiery speech had been quickly forgotten everywhere else._

_Strangely….or maybe not so strangely….the fighter pilots remembered her. Reikken told him that “No chance?” was a call out before a jump on Rogue Squadron. The answering call was “No choice.”_

 

Her hair was pinned back, white on one side. Damn, this was as good a projection as he’d ever seen. You could still see the green in her eyes.

 

[Senate of the New Republic]

Five people stood together at dfc08:00/2m. Each of them wore something white…a headscarf, a shirt, a neck ribbon. One, an elderly Bothan female openly wore a Senatorial chain. The shadows on some of the images were subtly different. These people were not all in the same place. Good. A tall Chandrillan stepped forward to stand beside the Bothan and his old heart skipped a beat. The granddaughter, Clarissa Rayma. _How had she gotten away?_

Five out of three hundred and four. The bounty offered for each of their heads was massive. Two had been captured and executed already.

 

 

 

[Resistance Command]

Seven people clustered around dfc.03:00/2.5m. None of them were in any kind of uniform beyond the three in field jackets but they all wore battered Starbird insignia pinned at regulation angle on shoulders and sleeves. He was enough of an old fool that it mattered to him.

Three looked familiar … _four if you counted Kaylyra Andor._

Calun Emmat, _one of Mandine’s aides._

Larma D’Acy.  _He remembered a tiny junior officer with blond curls manning the ground communications bunker at Lothal under brutal fire, refusing to evacuate until the last man was out._

Old Nien Nunb, _assigned to fly the Millenium Falcon at Endor_ ,  _one of Akbar’s favorite “fixer” pilots, a relentlessly cheery Sullestan who seemed to show up everywhere flying anything_.

Between them stood Kaylyra Andor in an unmarked flightsuit and a dark-haired young man who must be Flight Cmdr. Poe Dameron…. _decorated NR Defense forces veteran before he resigned, Organa’s rumored right hand, the hero who’d taken down the Starkiller._

There were others….but at the sight of Dameron it had hit him like a brick.

He’d noticed her absence but hadn’t credited it at once, expecting a slight delay since the  woman knew how to make an entrance when necessary, nobody better.

 

_On Pendarr, he had hooked it up on the house system even though Thorn usually only let him watch news in his office. This time his dear detached-from-politics doctor sat beside him on the edge of the sofa positively slack-jawed with astonishment and watched the live feed. When Organa walked out onto the Senate floor dressed hair to toe in black satin the raucous chamber dead dead silent._

_He had almost laughed aloud._  Did  _anyone who knew her expect her to be cowed?_ _She wasn’t here to resign and she damn sure wasn’t going to go quietly._

_"You want to paint me as Darth Vader’s daughter?" She might as well have said. "Go ahead and try you sons of bitches."_

_Walking up to the podium she untied the high-collared cloak that covered half her face. and tossed it back standing like the queen she had always refused to be._

_“My name is Leia Organa. I am the daughter of Bail Organa, once Senator of this body and hero of the Alliance and of Breha Alderra, last Queen of Alderaan. Black is the Alderaanian color of mourning and though I swore in the hour I watched my beloved family and my world destroyed that my only ritual of mourning if I lived would be the destruction of the Empire and all it stood for I wear it now for them....for my true parents and for she who I could not mourn publicly even after I learned her name….for the woman who gave birth to me, Padme Nabarre Amidala Skywalker.”_

_The hall went wild._

_Brilliant._

 

 

 Larma D’Acy spoke first, “Comrades, allies, friends. We stand together in a Galaxy under attack….”

She had a quiet firm voice. It might not have held in an echoing Senate Hall but here, in a room of forty or more who knew the bitter stakes, it worked. She kept it brief…just a few sentences. 

Then young Commander Dameron spoke. “We are more than a Resistance now, we are the new Alliance…”

_He’s going to be the one to say it, isn’t he?_ _Flight Squadron Commanders were natural leaders. They had to be._

“Leia Organa passed from us some weeks ago.”

 

For some reason Draven thought of a young soldier dead for thirty years.

_I’m sorry Corporal Tonc. The Princess is gone._

 

Silence fell for a moment and then the questions began, talking, there was confusion, ….but less than might have been, less than he would have feared if he’d known in advance what was going to be said here. Whoever they were these people were the survivors.

The old knew already and the young had learned quickly. Heroes fall, the battle goes on.

Davits Draven forced himself to pay attention. He needed to focus on what was going on here, now.

_When this was done he would ask Prekev to open him a cloaked short-burst audio to the medical ship, still under construction and hidden in the Lothal system. It seemed important that Thorn hear the news from him first._

 

While  Dameron spoke Bodhi Rook bowed his head but otherwise he and the rest of “Lighthouse” remained stoic. They had already known. Kaylyra must have told them.

 Jyn Erso’s eyes looked to others while they spoke but always returned to her daughter. She probably didn't give a damn who noticed either.

The Commander finished his statement and answered more questions, mostly from the Senate group, several of whom wept openly. Senator Rayma did not. Although the young woman looked stricken she spoke only once, echoing Organa whether she knew it or not, "The time for sorrow comes when the fight is done."

People settled grimly.

"There will be "break-out sessions," platform by platform," D'Acy said, "if, as we hope, our signal can hold secure. This is a time for connection and the sharing of the basic operational plans. Lighthouse has eyes on the Enemy and will report first. " 

“Decisions will need to be made about Command structure, right now we are a small enough group that we can still work laterally and cell by cell, but that needs to be laid out clearly and we need to have a plan in place for managing group communications when our numbers grow…because they will. Also now that we have a small and growing number of sweet and kick-ass ships that can beat the First Order Tracking we'll need to communicate combat actions on the move…” came from Jyn Erso.

Mekkan grimaced, as if he were working out the Basic slang for a second then laughed.

“You are right, Lighthouse. The kicking of ass will commence soon”

Three people in fur-cloaks attached at the shoulder to brown and black beaded armor stood at dfc.06:00/3.5m.Two stood silent with scarves across their faces but the third, face covered with a spiked mask split by a silver eye-visor, spoke. 

[Cloud Riders/Aerie II]

"We have been contacted by an operative identifying as LQ2. Their aid has been invaluable but I ask you now are you this person?"

"No," Cassian Andor said, "Not directly. Lighthouse can supply Core Command and individual cell leaders with information and analysis on First Order activities as we find it. LQ2’s mission is to liaison communication between cells and teams and while they may initiate missions when necessary their main role is to find out what you need on the ground, assess capabilities and provide mission support.”

_Fulcrum. They were putting together a new version of Fulcrum._

 

Draven realized who Cassian Andor reminded him of now, as he stood there in his good but plain coat, listening far more than he spoke, holding onto hope by a dozen threads and risking his own child because there was no other way. Bail Organa.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My god. I do talk about teachers a lot don't I?
> 
> Of course this whole thing wasn't a set-up for a gratuitous Enfys Nest cameo and Enfys/Jyn Erso reunion.....how dare you suggest such a thing.


	50. The Spy and the Jedi Knight: Part 1.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kayly Andor and Rey meet as the Resistance meets to plan for the Council of allies.  
> Kayly remembers her first contact with the Cloud-Riders and Portia's history with the Jedi becomes an issue. She also makes her priorities clear.  
> Rey hears some condensed and edited parts of the history of Lighthouse.  
> Light saber? What light saber?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Housekeeping.

 

 

 

 

“Wow, you kids spiffed this place up nicely,” Poe marveled.“Somebody get me a cold beer and I’ll think I’ve gotten the Kuat Prime Service package.”

Dameron had described the place as a wrecked and trash-filled chop-shop but these bays were clean and well organized. Instead of ceiling lifts or big crawler rigs they had funky little tow-trailers each with a half dozen dented and mismatched astromechs ready to pull the ships in.

A blue-eyed Wookie…. _Oh Ea, he had hair any Taun would envy wildly_ …shrugged as if greatly pleased by the praise but too modest to show it.

BB-8 rocketed past nearly knocking both of them over.

*R1-38!PS-56!R2-111! Wise R2-D2!PS-643!….*

_Bless him. He had old friends here._

 

Oma 3X-136 H4 was little more than a unmapped rock in a poorly mapped system. Crimson Dawn gangs bombed out the would-be competitors who excavated and tried to build a base here somewhere around the end of the Clone Wars. One side or the other had bribed the local Imperial cartographers to forget about the place and it had remained un surveyed ever since. Spin on the asteroid made it tricky to get into and out of but the Cloud-Riders had dug out part of the rust and rubble a few years back to use as a bolt hole and they tipped the Resistance off to it’s potential.

 

 

 

 

 

Kayly's first contact with the Riders happened in the pitch-dark days before she’d found Dameron in that alley.

Guardian was parked on Orinda, which was Remnant territory in the very heart of the Core and Kayly had been watching the shiny and well-armored heavy transport in stationary orbit above as well as the parade of container pods moving up to it. At least a dozen fighters circled in surveillance formation.Portia had gotten them onto the ground in the shadow of a personnel carrier and for 48 hours they sat powered down and shielded by a glacier ridge of toxic ice.

_With no idea where to look for Leia Organa and the Resistance without endangering them or herself she’d begun with the most standard kind of surveillance, data gathering._

As desperately as she wanted to kill someone all Kayly could think to do was hide, listen, log ships and hack peeks into manifests…. as Mama liked to say “when in doubt follow the money.”

_Someone was supplying the First Order within the Core. Who? How? What was the plan for maintaining multiple blockade forces at opposite ends of the Galaxy now that Starkiller was dust and the new “Supreme” was getting measured for a bigger throne?_

 She slept in the pilot's seat and listened to music. 

 

About the time she thought she might lose her mind a ship… _a Strike class cruiser?_ … blinked out of and just as suddenly back into hyperspace dangerously close to the atmosphere’s edge. Dozens of impossibly tiny dots had dropped out and were scattering like wasps from a kicked nest.

_What the fuck?!_

She dropped her feet from the console so fast she almost fell sideways out of the seat.

[“What was that?”] Portia said.

 _Later Kayly would fully register that never before in her life had Portia asked_ **_her_ ** _“What’s that?” but in the moment she'd been too busy scrambling to open up the standard exterior cameras._

Dots swarmed the container pods as fighters wheeled round. She cranked the amplification. These weren’t ships… _Puta de hijo_ ….they looked like one person skeleton scull rigs. Pressure suited and masked people were literally standing strapped to flight engines and firing single light laser cannon.

_“I can’t read them on the ship scanners,”_

Portia marveled aloud in Guardian’s programmed computer vocal… _some pop star Bodhi had liked back in the day_ …at the same time the old man’s voice spoke in Kayly’s ear through the clip

_[“They are too small. I’m only seeing this through the mod.”]_

_“They are too small. I’m only seeing this through the mod._ ”

 _Through my eyes, she means._  

[“Well, that’s insane.”]

_“Well, that’s insane.”_

_Blue fucking hell yes it is._

 

“Damn it Portia one at a time.”

They must have fired grappling lines because she saw what looked like hair-thin threads and several pods were pulled out of formation. The fighters were raining in fire and a few of the dots flamed and fell but most of the shots were missing. The tiny rigs dropped their lines, wheeled and dove back in to attack again.

 _If Guardian’s scanners couldn’t see them neither could the fighters targeting computers. This was a naked eye firefight._  

 _Pirates,_ she thought. 

_But pirates….even insane pirates… would surely be trying to steal whatever equipment, power cells, fuel packs or sweetie protein packs were in those containers. These ships were destroying them wholesale._

_This was sabotage or maybe just a straight up “fuck you.”_

It lasted two minutes at the outside before the “wasps” rocketed away in thirty different directions.

“We have to get out of here!” she shouted to Portia, slamming her harness into place.

Chunks  of container were falling and this sky would be swarming with local security and extra First Order fighters from the in-system destroyer within seconds.

Portia set calculations as Kayly backed out fast, hugging the ground tight enough to scrape paint before turning hard the way Bodhi had taught her and punching straight up.

“Aft cameras at max!” 

 

Tiny rigs were coalescing on the upper edge of atmo far off behind.

They were hard to see but the fighters surely knew that now.

_Most of these fly-fucks were probably trained only on simulators and had no idea how to adjust targeting without a computer lock-on but it would only take two or three who knew what they were doing to wipe out everyone._

[“That ship is back”] 

At the edge of the black the carrier appeared again. She looked like a re-built Strike from the top but her belly opened as a landing bay and the black dots swarmed back inside her even as she readied for the jump….as if she were sweeping them up. 

The fighters were coming around again.

[“There’s another fighter set now. Six TIE. Two Interceptors. A second destroyer has just dropped into the system. I’m recalculating. Go now.”]

 _They don’t know t_ _heir jump is cut off._

“Tell them to follow us.”

 

[“Kayly we don’t know....”]

_We know they aren’t First Order._

“Send it. Let them lock."

She punched the jump.

_If they trusted her they’d live. If they didn’t they probably wouldn’t. There was nothing else she could do._

 

The stars vanished into line.

 

“Did the First Order see us?”

_Kayly had a Plan B if Guardian’s outline were “made” this early on but she really hated Plan B._

[“No. We were not scanned. I believe the Enemy had their hands full.”]

_Shit. That was close._

She found herself clenching her fingers and flexing them.

 

[“We need to drop out for 03:41 Kayly. I took us through a fragment.”]

The stars returned.

Portia knew truncated corridors that showed up on no maps. “Fragments” she called them, describing shreds of the hyperspace “streams” of her youth. Most were only navigable for short distances and might drop you half a system away from where you started to leave you stuck there for a few minutes to an hour before you could get to a proper safe corridor jump but they were damned useful in evading pursuit. When she dove back into the Celanon Spur they wouldn’t know where to look for her. It was one way to beat tracking.

[“Well….they may be insane but at least they know how to follow a jump signature.”]

The Strike had dropped out behind them.  
“You told them where we were coming out?”

[“I assume you didn’t want them to die in the corridor, or you wouldn’t have saved them in the first place. Was I wrong? They are messaging.”] 

It was text only. A closed box. No link.

 _[WHO? WHY?]_

_These people might hate the First Order but the bounty on anybody identifying themselves as Resistance or New Republic was high….very high. Only Leia Organa could approve that kind of risk. It wasn't Kayly's chance to take._  

“Portia, send back in the same format.”

[A SHADOW. ONE WHO SEEKS ALLIES] 

 _[T-10//RNDA443/118]_  

“That’s a solar surveillance platform. “ Portia said. “They’re giving you a drop box for further communication.” 

_[TRUST COMES FROM TRUST. WHAT WILL WE CALL YOU SHADOW?]_

 

 _“I love you, Rat,” she had said to Galen, hugging the tall bastard as if he were still her baby brother._ _She had not said any of the things she wanted to say…I know what I’m putting on you. I’m sorry. Forgive me. I have to do this. I can’t live with myself if I don’t try.Take care of them._

_“I love you too Little Queen. Be careful. Find your way home.”_

 

[CALL ME LQ2] 

_[GRATITUDE LQ2. WE ARE THE CLOUD RIDERS. WE WILL SPEAK AGAIN]_

They jumped out seconds later, each ship in a different direction, but that was the first contact.

 

 

Finn and Rose were off and started pulling crates onto the platform while the Wookie wrapped the former Stormtrooper in a roaring hug.

“Hey! Hey! Easy big fellow!” Finn laughed a little nervously.

_“In case you are wondering he says, “Good boy! You are still alive. Good. She worries herself when you are not in her sight.”_

Only a few hundred thousand Wookies had survived the massacres on Kasyyk and the forced labor camps. This was not just any Wookie either, this was Chewbacca.

Walking up to one of the heroes of the Rebellion and saying “I named my favorite stuffed animal after you,” would probably be weird, right?”

 By  _“she” he must mean the last apprentice…Rey._

“Can you tell me how to talk to him?” Kayly whispered.

 _“For the thousandth time Kaylyra, I’m not a translator and no. He’ll understand you perfectly well. Reports describe him as an accomplished linguist and you don’t have the vocal cavity to manage more than a handful of phonemes in Shirriwook anyway. The best most humans can manage is “Yes” No” and “Please don’t kill me._ ”

 

Poe laughed at her

“Come on, Andor,” he said, “Rey and Chewie brought in the last of the transmission equipment Portia ordered in with them on the Falcon. Lets test this little holo-date setup with our nearest and dearest before we need to open on the big stage.” 

“What’s a holo-date?”

“It’s what lonely adolescents on rural Yavin IV nervously try to set-up during the rainy season.”

“Poor Dameron.”

“We can’t all be the belle of the Fish Fleet.”

“Fair, culero, it was a Fish Fair.”

 

 

 

 

_The first thing Kayly thought was “She’s a not much more than a kid.”_

In the pictures she’d seen the Jedi favored sweeping robes and a stern but noble expression of gazing into the middle distance.

Rey wore a khaki shirt, blue trousers and  short scuffed brown boots. She couldn’t have been a day more than twenty either, not so different than any Scavenger girl you'd play knucklebones with at a Fair for drink chips.

There was something about her though that made Kayly think of her mother’s friend Rosheen. This Rey had some muscle. Kayly would wager she could handle herself in a fight

The last Jedi apprentice threw arms around Finn’s neck first and hugged him like a long lost… _what?_ …before turning to Poe with a proud beaming smile. 

“We found everything on your shopping list Commander….I mean Poe, but it wasn’t easy.”

“I took a look,” Rose said while an antique R2 unit pulled the last of the transmitter blocks in. “It’s all all high grade smuggler’s gear, do I even want to know where you got it?”

Chewbacca made a noise that might have been a chuckle.

“Don’t ask,” Rey said. “Even so, nothing here is going have anything like the range you were talking about, especially if we buffer.” 

“That’s my job,” Kayly told her, “We just need to strip out some of the programming and set it to connect through a couple of…ah, unusual relays.”

 

 Dameron finally did his job and introduced her.“Rey, this is Kayly Andor aka; Resistance Intelligence. Kayly this is Rey, rank to be determined.”

The girl held out a hand sideways like a Fisher and Kayly lightly clasped and shook it in what passed for Standard Respectful Greeting out here.

 _Strong. Her fingers had the familiar healed cuts and callouses of a working Scavenger._ _What was actually involved in being a post-Clone Wars Jedi Knight? Did you have a day job?_

 

“ _If opportunity presents ask her about Skywalker. I’ve always wondered what happened to him and Poe Dameron has been less than forthcoming. No doubt the recollection is painful but…_ ” 

 _For Eassake Portia._  

BB-8 came rolling in to tell them that another shuttle had arrived with Connie and Nunb aboard.

 

“Who’s talking? Who is that?”

Rey’s head had snapped around and she was staring at Kayly with wide eyes.

Actually it was closer to say she was staring in Kayly’s general direction, eyes focused somewhere over her left shoulder. 

 

“ _Kayly. Take the mod off. Immediately_.”

 

She did and without thinking wrapped her fingers around it protectively.

 

______________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rey hadn’t been sure sure what to expect, someone taller and more mysterious perhaps, certainly someone older. 

LQ2the Resistance’s hacker and sabotage specialist turned out to be an ordinary human female only a few years older than herself.

Details were sketchy but Kaylyra Andor had been a rookie Resistance pilot from the early days, another “victory kid” like Dameron and Connix. Leia had sent her out on a mission, before Crait even before D’Qar, to a forgotten listening post that might be in the UR or might not.

According to Connie she was also an old friend of Poe's or at least that's what it sounded like. Rey’d been too embarrassed to ask what the phrase “booty call” actually meant. 

 

_Rey first met Poe Dameron in among the adrenaline-pumped survivors as they crowded into the Falcon at Crait._ _The Commander turned away from hugging Threnalli and passing Finn a blanket for Rose to look at her and smile like they already knew each other._

_She had stupidly held out her hand and introduced herself with “I’m Rey.”_

_“I know,” he said, immediately following with “The rocks thing… extremely cool. Thank you.”_  

 _“He’s not like other people,” Finn had warned her._   _"I was afraid I’d have to carry the guy…fuck knows what they did to him in there. Ren had just walked out like an hour before. They used an IT-O on him.”_ _No Finn. It was more than that. It was a hell of a lot more than that._

_"But he just stares at me and them smiles real wide.'We can do this,' he says...the son of a bitch laughed,I swear. It sounds insane now but I believed him. He believed him.”_

 

There was a light in Poe Dameron that dimmed sometimes but never quite went out. It kept everyone going in those dark weeks after. The man did not give up, ever. Even so it wasn't was until after “the bank job” that Rey saw the real fire for the first time. 

“Leia, if we have Lighthouse…if we’re not finding our way blind…we have a chance, there’s a path forward.”Leia Organa had laid her hand on his shoulder, like a queen would a champion she was sending out to battle in an old story or a mother would the son she sent out to seek his fortune …. “I know”.  It was agony to watch.

_Leia explained when they walked together. When he talked about Lighthouse Poe wasn’t talking about the mysterious “sensitives” Luke’s books hinted at or the wandering white-cloaked figure she saw in her dreams.  These people were soldiers of the old Alliance who’d stayed on the “outside.”_

_“Some stayed in the cold because they never fit neatly into the official narrative of the War and others just because the outside was what they wanted,” she said. “The Mon Calmari have a saying about how things invisible from the center can be seen from the margins. Three of those soldiers...those heroes.... became Lighthouse.”_

 

A few weeks after Leia made her first contact with Lighthouse they moved out from their hiding place, connected to the Riders and found Black Squadron. A few days after that LQ2 appeared.  This unseen person or persons began to feed them scan-docs, entry codes and access to cloaked message terminals. Slowly, carefully, they moved forward.

 

 

 _Finn’s face should have shown up on every bounty alert in the Outer Rim when they were unexpectedly boarded off Kafrene.   Instead the troopers had checked their “manifests” and moved on. Jessika Pavaran to the cockpit as soon as they undocked and Rey from the co-pilot seat saw silent text on her console. _ _[_ _Go out as K3X114. Jump asap. Can only hold it valid for 59:00. On own after. You will be out of my range]_

_[THANK YOU] Jess typed back._

_[_ _Good luck_ _] was the only reply._ _“Fuck,” Jess had said, as if“I don’t know who or what they are but if they can swallow I will buy them a beer for every hand or tentacle or grasping mechanism they have.”_

 

 

 

BB-8 came barrelling back down the ramp . 

*Poe. Poe. Poe. Friend Rey. Friend Kayly. Friend Kaydel Ko Connix is here. Commander Nunb is docking a small and fuel-inefficient Lambda T-3 shuttle with a knock in the aft engine…* 

_There was an echo in her head as if many voices were speaking in perfect unison…asking a question about Poe…. about Luke._

When she looked up at the Intelligence officer, Rey thought she saw someone else standing directly behind her. 

The officer herself was visible, unchanged but outlined in a kind of blue light.

_For all the world it had looked like one of the amorphous figures she followed in the sea cave beneath the Jedi temple….the vague forms glimpsed when she strained to see her parents and could only conjure up shadows and half-heard voices that finally resolved into images of herself._ _It had come to her since then that she had created the shapes in her own mind, wrapping them around the voices trying to give visual form to some shuttered memory of things  heard but not seen._

_Like those figures this one had a human outline that never coalesced into anything like a recognizable form. For an instant she had an impression…not really a sight, more like an idea…. of a pale woman with long dark hair._   _But this wasn’t a woman. This was no more a person than saying "ship" out loud in Basic made a ship. A word couldn't do more than start an idea. You might picture a specific ship in your mind….a  C-class shuttle, the Falcon, an Interceptor… but even that wasn’t the full meaning, only an example. You knew even as the picture flashed through your minds eye that that wasn't anything but the tiniest fraction of what "ship" meant._  

“Who’s talking? Who is that?” she blurted. 

Kaylyra Andor reached up and pulled a silver ring, from her ear. As she did the light and the form, the vision, voice and “idea” all vanished

Her green eyes were fixed on Rey now. “Damn,” the woman said.

 

“What’s going on?” Poe Dameron asked. 

“I’m sorry….I thought I saw someone behind you..”Rey felt unable to come up with any explanation of her vision that wouldn’t sound like babble.

"Do we have a problem Andor?" 

 Kayly Andor was shaking her head. “Bodhi was never online near Skywalker so Portia always wondered if….well, now we know. Jedi can hear the mods…”

Poe looked concerned. 

“Don’t take it personally,”the spy said to Rey as if she were carefully explaining a business setback, “Lighthouse is ruthless about matters of location security. We’re just going to need to establish some extra protocols.”

“Conference room!” Poe ordered. “We have 04:00 to fix this.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her easy informality of before was ever so slightly dialed back but the change didn’t make her distrust Kaylyra Andor, the opposite really.

Rey understood that kind of full-body caution.

There was a watchfulness about the dark-haired woman that reminded her of a crew junker measuring a buyer.

 

_There was no insult in it. It wasn’t as if you only watched asshole buyers like K’oona or Unkar Plutt. You had to be that way even with the ones you liked, fair and decent ones like old Abby who’d front for an extra protein chip or a quarter-liter of drinkable, or cut a beezza spine out of your foot and pack it with ointment…to build goodwill or maybe just because they didn’t want some kid to die on their doorstep._

_You watched the decent ones extra careful in fact. With assholes you always knew what to keep on guard for. It was the good people who put you off your game or meaning to help said something they shouldn’t where somebody else could hear._

_In a traveling crew the biggest healthiest kids always went in in first, and never all at once only one or two at a time to hide your numbers and conceal your group’s condition. On the move if you met a traveller or another band you’d trade or even share food and company but you never let them know where the rest of your group were camped or where the entrance was to that debris site you were counting on to get you all through storm season. You just couldn’t trust anybody that much. It was life or death and not always just yours. Junkers knew the rules. When she was a kid in the Sand Pickers crew she’d never broken them and even after the group moved North toward Orkoon Hub and she’d stayed behind alone, stubbornly, stupidly refusing to move far from Niima Outpost… even then when it was just herself she’d mostly kept them._

 

 

 

 

 

They used one of the empty containers that had been converted to a lunch room and sat on folding chairs. 

“Leia's last orders were to keep Lighthouse's location secure at all costs. I am a soldier of the Resistance and I will fight until the First Order is burnt to ash….but before I joined your army I was literally born into another alliance, one in defense of Ea. I will not endanger one to protect the other. That is a false choice and I won’t accept it.” 

“No one will ever ask you to,” Poe said.

“I believe that or I wouldn’t be here,” Andor looked straight at him,“but I’m not the one you have to convince. Portia will be a harder sell.”

 

“Your AI has problem with the Jedi?” Finn asked. 

“Don’t call her that,” Poe said, “She gets testy if you call her that.” 

Kayly sighed. “There’s some history. The Old Republic built a base on Ea at some point after 1032 BBY. The Jedi found Portia and assuming she was some alien tech they’d accidentally rebooted they “used” her as a nav computer and operational AI for at least 500 years. She went along with it because she was bored and lonely and desperate to find out what was happening in the Galaxy but none of them seem to have bothered much to find out who or what she was or impressed her as caring about the place much at all. Eventually they found an easier route to what they wanted in the UR and gradually abandoned their base at Ea… it was never much more than a way station to them and they quickly forgot it and her." 

What did the Jedi want in the UR?”Finn asked.

“Odds are, the same thing everybody always wanted,” she said, “Kyber.”

 _The Deathstars, Starkiller Base….and the heart of every Jedi lightsaber._  

“About a century back Portia became convinced she saw her “Enemy” revived and wandering around in Republic space somewhere. It's important to understand thatshe associates the Sith, Snoke, Palapatine, Ren…..that whole “Dark Side” duality...with a parasitic entity that wiped out her people, both the biological and the mechanical, consumed her whole galaxy basically.”

“Yeah,” Poe said, “I can see how that would fuck you up.”

“The Jedi wouldn't listen to her warnings or didn't understand. In a panic she shut herself down for sixty years and booted back up the day after Scarifto find that the Jedi and their Republic were gone, the bad guys were in charge, the Empire had crashed a satellite beacon on top of her and a couple of battle-shocked and marooned Alliance soldiers had wandered into her second level willing to make a deal." Nunb made a whistling sound and shook his head. "To the Empire Ea just one nameless navigational plot point lost among hundreds of thousands of others in one of hundreds of unstable regions in and near the UR. The New Republic never knew more than her code name. Lighthouse's handlers made no maps and destroyed all records."

"So now you hide in plain sight." Nunb’s translator crackled. He nodded as if he greatly approved. "The oldest weapon in any guerilla's arsenal but much of the UR border regions are First Order-accessible now, if not outright overrun.” 

"Yes,"Andor said, "we've got the scars to prove it. If the First Order had the slightest idea of what we are up to they would burn us in an instant.  Even I don't know how to get home if Portia doesn't bring me in and that's the way it has to stay."

“But you said the Jedi had a base there once. Might it show up on any ancient Jedi maps or anything?” Finn asked.

Poe laughed, "Speaking as somebody who spent some time trying to chase down ancient Jedi maps, those guys were not clear with directions”

 _My friend,_ Rey thought, _you have no bloody idea._  

“You bring up a good point Finn. It's possible. Until the last War the only ships that came to ground on Ea did it by accident and usually in very small pieces. Survivors were so few as to be fairy tales. What keeps Portia awake at night….joke by the way… are the two exceptions we know of.  While Portia was off-line a civilian craft landed intact, we estimate 19BBY but that's a guess because the pilot burned out his own nav then seems to have committed suicide without ever leaving the ship. Later..two or three years after Order 66, two Jedi found their way to Ea. They  landed intact in the North Woods and walked almost 250 k in a beeline to the ruins of the old base.Their little shuttle was stripped to a nurslings play-structure decades before my parents got to it, so we have no clue as to where they came from or how they found their way in but they seem to have known exactly where they were going." 

“Might they have been looking for the source of the Jedi’s kyber?” Rey blurted.  Everyone looked at her.

“It’s in one of the texts," she blushed, "...just a torn page told about Jedi younglings being taken into “ancient and dangerous realms of space ”…which totallysounds like the UR right?…. blindfolded on a mystical ship to search for crystals for their lightsabers. It was supposed to be a sort of ritual trial." _She'd been looking for the beginners guide to light saber repair._

 

Kayla Andor looked at her, “Ea has  no kyber, thank the Force,” she said coldly, “Otherwise defenses or not we'd have been gutted for it like every other planet with raw materials the bastards wanted.”

_Finn's eyes dropped to the tabletop. Like Rey he was probably remembering Rose's stories about her sister and the little mining settlement they'd lived on. What happened when the First Order came._

“The people on those ships were looking for a place to die. For whatever reason they gave up hope....that's my mother's assessment anyway. The Sisters of my village would have helped the Jedi but they didn’t want help. They lived there as hermits for years, alongside my people but never interacting with them until they died, presumably of natural causes….” _Well,_ Rey thought _, that sounds almost too familiar._ “…only our elders still remember  them.My parents crash-landed blind after Scarifand accidentally woke Portia up. They had no clear idea where they even were until she told them.” 

“How did your people know they were Jedi?” Finn asked. 

“They didn’t,” the woman shrugged. “My parents figured it out afterwards because they left a lightsaber on the windowsill.”

_What??_

“What?!” she, Finn, Poe and maybe even Nunb all said at the same time. 

“You have a lightsaber?” Poe asked, astonished, “This is awesome! Jyn Erso with a lightsaber. Epic!” 

The woman’s cautious demeanor broke. She laughed. “I’m going to tell her you said that.” 

_A light saber, …oh Leia._

“Is there any chance it’s still functional?” Rey tried not to sound desperate. 

Kayly Andor looked puzzled, “Of course it’s functional. Those things seem practically unbreakable. My father keeps it in his good toolbox. We use it all the time to cut fused casing.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry. This one doesn't so much conclude as end in the middle. Holidays. Second part to follow.


	51. The Council- Part Two: The Senator

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Council continues as the New Alliance comes together. Clarissa Rayma, granddaughter of Mon Mothma and one of the last surviving members of the Senate of the New Republic. She recalls her escape from Chandrilla and first meeting with the mysterious LQ2 (aka Kaylyra Andor).
> 
> The Senators come to terms with what they are facing and learn of Leia's death.  
> Sorting through her Grandmother's memories and her own Clarissa reflects on what the legacy of heroes may be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shameless throwbacks to Over the Edge Chapters 70/Picture, 76/War Horses and 81/Gifts. Also underage drinking references. Diplomats kids misbehave because no one ever searches their luggage and they can’t be arrested

 

 

 

 

 

“Have we heard from the others?” Senator Rala Kre’fey asked

“Not since the last packet,” Wolana said, bringing the elderly Bothan her cane and helping her to stand, “but they were nearing the transmit coordinates. Force willing we will see them there and well.”

“Come stand by me Clarissa,” she tapped her bone cane imperiously on a spot on the flat mesh flooring.

“Not too close,” the Dressellian tech advised, “We don’t want to interfere with the sight-lines.”

“Close enough to pick me up if I fall then, but not so near as to make me look like a rer-mouse.”

“You won’t fall,” Clarissa Rayma told her, “what is it the Seventh Book says? ‘In the hour of trial the Influence of the mind over the body will stand as the greatest measure of the individual.”

“Tell it to my knees, brave girl. Is my chain straight?”

Clarissa knelt, adjusted the older females shoulder pins and laid all the links flat. The ship’s medic had lent them a small white tunic and worn backwards with a belt it fit Rala almost like a Senate robe.

“The Sage was a sanctimonious, patriarchal Dark Ages hypocrite who was dead before he reached middle-age.Secular scholars disagree over whether he drank himself to death or his third mate poisoned him.”

“Now, now, that’s the kind of attitude that got you censured by the Bothawui Diplomatic Council.”

The grey-furred female took her hand in trembling gnarled fingers but smiled to show white canines that still gleamed sharp.

“Let them see you, Clarissa. Show them your measure and take theirs. I am old. This will be your Alliance.”

 

 

 

 

_“Your calm was an inspiration to us all,” N’Girra said when they were “safe” aboard the Dressellian ship, after weeks hidden in containers, smuggled from barge to barge. Whole days of it spent in space-suits, unable to even speak to each other._

_Calm? she thought. Was that what it looked like from the outside?_ _I wasn't calm. I was a ghost or some kind of time-delayed hologram._

_She remembered watching as if from a small distance a woman that she recognized but could not quite place move, act, react...as terrible, harrowing events unfolded._

 

 

 

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Clarissa Rayma, Senator-elect for the Fourth District of Chandrilla had been talking to her former law partners on a split screen conference. Though she had been required to resign from the practice six months before when she stood for election, the Rygel Hospitality Service Workers Class action suit had finally….fucking finally… reached closing arguments. Even if it meant delaying her move to the Capitol for a day to stretch out those final sweet official hours as a private citizen Counseller Rayma had worked on the bloody case for seven years, taken those women’s statements personally, and she’d be damned if she didn’t at least sit in to hear the draft.

The adjuration session was closed so Derain Clark and Felicia Tau were already physically on Hosnian Prime ready to make the final face-to-face statements in twelve hours. Esme Lorre was still on Coruscant and Armie Castel was....oh Force...still in his pajamas on Ord Mantell.

“If you’d drawn the short straw to present you’d have had to put on a suit.” Felicia was saying.

“If I’d drawn the short straw to present, I’d have gone out and bought one,” Armie replied serenely sipping his tea, “but I didn’t so I don’t.”

“Let’s get started,” Esme said. “BTW everybody puts in for straight billables on this. We are slapping the bastards with eight years of Defense legal fees in settlement.”

“Everyone except for Clarissa that is, who is of course officially not here.” Felicia teased.

“Of course not,” Derain winked, “the Senator is preparing to take her seat in less than 24 hours. One would never expect her to be sitting in on strategy discussions on a pro-bono case she litigated half a decade ago. Her impartiality must be beyond question thus she is on the other side of the System.”

“Shut up and tell the Senator-elect what you’re going to say,” she said, “and she further advises you as an unpaid private citizen to avoid sarcasm for 24 hours before standing in front of any judicial panel Ser L’Bakka is chairing. He can smell it.”

They laughed and Derain started outlining his closing.

Then there was a sound behind him....some kind of alarm.

Voices in the background.

Felicia looked to her left.

“It’s some kind of air attack warning,” she said, “We’re being told to...” She and Derain vanished.

Armie was standing up now.

“Force,” his face was pale, “There’s a light. A red line...I can see it out my window. Clarissa what...?”

“Martin!” Esme was shouting her son’s name. “Get back insi...”

Audio was gone but the images flickered on for a few seconds longer before breaking up. Outside the media office window Clarissa could see the Library staff and summer interns clustered out the lawn, looking up and pointing. Their faces looked terrified. One young Twi’lek girl was screaming.

The house system spoke in their normal reassuring voice, echoing words that suddenly appeared on the surface of her data table and on the wall screen.

DO NOT PANIC. WHAT YOU ARE PERCEIVING IS A FREAK OPTICAL EFFECT. YOU ARE NOT THE ONES BEING TARGETED.

“Hema, what is happening?”

“I don’t know Clarissa,” the house answered, “I was asked to pass on that transmission.”

_Asked by whom?_

Clarissa stood frozen.

Then Leia appeared, blinking in the poor resolution of a mass transmission. She recognized the emergency address code. It was one the Resistance had held for emergencies only.

“The First Order has built a planetkiller,” the small image of the Rebellion's heroine was saying, “...a new vastly more powerful Deathstar. Hosnian Prime is gone. All five worlds in the Hosnian System were destroyed without quarter or warning. The Free worlds of the New Republic are under attack by a First Order armada. The Resistance is fighting. May the Force be with us all.”

It began then.

She watched herself walk to the doorway and call out to the Foundation Secretary. There were emergency procedures, they had done regular drills but those were intended for fire, natural disaster or terrorist attack.

_Blast and fire shields would be set. People should get to shelters. The droid staff needed to initiate data protection protocols._

She waved the security guard aside when he tried to get her to go to the near shelter and Petra seemed to be weighing stunning and carrying her bodily when Gail Ackbar appeared over the same desperate channel.

He wore a khaki Republican flightsuit.

 _He had seven he told her laughing when she last saw him aboard the Raddus, of varying degrees of formality and slept in one of the least uncomfortable ones each night. “Why?” she had asked. “Because I am old combat sailor who cannot sleep even in peacetime if unprepared for war,” he said, “and because I am Mon Calmari and I need every eye that sees me to remember how quickly the wave of history can turn_.”

Straight backed and stern-jawed he spoke like the captain he was, telling them the ship was lost.

"…the Enemy is also specifically targeting for vengeance  peaceful worlds it associates with the Civil War and the old Alliance. Chandrilla, Couruscant, Mon Cala, Kashyyk…"

_Petra laid a hand on her arm and she didn’t register feeling the touch only thinking, That man is trying to get that woman’s attention, she should look at him._

“...All of us who are the children and grandchildren of heroes will stand up together and face the darkness that rises to swallow the light our parents fought for. We will never yield and we will never forget.” 

“Ma’am,” the security guard's voice caught as if he himself were on the verge of tearsbut a former soldier, a professional…he mastered it quickly.

_She admired him for that, though in the moment she could not recall his name._

“Clarissa…they will come for you. We need to get you out of here.”

_Of course. Grandmother._

“Shut down the house systems," she heard herself say."Transfer Hema out. I need to burn everything. My …Senator Mothma’s personal files…many of those are separate and…”

“Clarissa, there is no time, Sandra will..”

“Do as I tell you,” she snapped. _Too loud. That woman sounds angry._ “Get the everyone out of the shelters and as far away from this place as possible. Make your preparations as you were ordered and come find me in the private residence. Keep power on there until the last.”

The man left and the woman who was and was not her strode out through the beautiful gardens for the last time. A faint screech cut the clear blue sky above…. _almost like the shrill of hawks, how had she never noticed that before?_ … but the flashes of silver were barely to be seen. Too high. CDF fighters were scrambling from the base at Brionelle on the coast. 

An abandoned cart at the door held cleaning service equipment so she took a uniform from the drawer beneath and put it on in the alcove. Then she moved through her grandmother’s apartments doing what she needed to do. Burning nearly everything.

The library archives would be sent out to a dozen academic locations in the hope that….but her Grandmother’s personal papers… _things that had never been published. Hiding places. names of allies who had never been officially recognized. Notes. Memos. Stories concealed from the “official” history._

The risk of trying to transfer them was too great. She entered the codes and pushed the buttons.

_Where was secure now?_

She opened a box by the bedside table and took out three small discs.

One contained infant holos of her father and her aunt.

 _School stills, he and her mother on their wedding day. No strategic value to anyone._ She slipped that into her pocket and zipped it.

As for the other two…. _the soundless security vid of a massively crowded troop transport and Alliance troops loading onto shuttles and the crisp 15-minute vid of a human woman flirtatiously giving a man a bad haircut at what looked like a lunchroom table while another human and some furred people laughed and chatted with them_ … she didn’t even know who the people were but Grandmother had asked to watch them again and again in those last awful days as if they gave her tremendous comfort.

Clarissa pocketed those as well then went back out to the front room for the box that held the chain. Not the New Republic one had they cremated with her but the one she had worn on the day she challenged Palpatine, when she turned and unhesitatingly walked out of the Senate unsure whether she would live long enough to reach the lift or be shot in the back before she got there.

_“589 steps,” she had told Clarissa with her faint smile. “In case you wondered.”_

The one she carried into exile.

Clarissa Rayma watched herself undo the collar of the uniform and slip the chain around her own neck before zipping it back up.

She shut the last of the power down and turned to find Petra… _yes that was his name_ …. at the door waiting for her. N’Girra, her Grandmother’s last secretary and memoirist was there as well, pale and shaking.

_Of course. Poor woman. She had just destroyed most of her life’s work with her own hands._

Petra glanced over her change of clothes.

“Good precaution,” he sounded almost admiring.

“I couldn’t find a flight suit,” she heard herself say cooly.

He no doubt thought her mad.

_Perhaps she was…a little, for a while._

_It was 681 steps to the closed speeder in the service lot_.

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Allright,” the tech was saying. “Let’s see if this works because as far as I know it’s fairy dust. Link up in 00:40.”

Clarissa shifted her feet on the transmission floor and adjusted the white scarf at her neck.

_Breathe Clarissa. Shoulders back and down._

 

They would see Leia and whichever of her people had survived.

Make direct contact with the Mon Calmari at last. Hopefully Susan would be there as well. She had gone with Jacen who promised to take her somewhere safe to set up a communication base. That was Susan’s great skill, making something from nothing. It seemed the man knew many old outposts and was searching them all. It was not safe for too many of them to be together in one place. They were all that remained of the Senate.

And presumably LQ2…aka “Lilith.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They had gone to Taris despite the risks. It had been her decision. A distress comm had come in using her Grandmother’s private Senatorial cypher. Only three people left alive knew that code, Clarissa and N’Girra and her Grandmother’s last intern, Susan Dorala ofTaris.

Senator Dorala had been leading an Ecological Conference on her home world when the attack came and if she was alive, if this was really her sending out a distress call, only they might be able to get to her before the First Order did.

The Outer Rim was in turmoil but the ex-Republic half-Twilek pilot who rescued them from the storage station at Petra's last call claimed to have found a contact, a gas miner, who could guide them.  Supremely confident in his little shuttles invisibility the man landed in the dark on a supposedly abandoned ramp in wastelands east of the Capitol. There by lantern light his contact introduced herself as Lilith Dano, a pony-tailed roughneck.

Before more could be said two drone lights swept in blinding everyone and cutting off escape. A  patrol had ambushed them.

Five Stormtroopers and a handful of Tarin mercenaries appeared from nowhere. A grey-suited FO officer ordered her,Jacen the pilot and their “contact” to kneel with hands on heads while his troopers dragged N’Girra out of the shuttle and threw her down beside them.

They had kicked away her pistol or Clarissa would have put a shot in Lilith herself when the miner shrugged “Sorry,” and made an immediate offer to lead two of the troopers to a waiting “high-value passenger”she’d hidden in one of her gas canisters. Two troopers accompanied her out of sight into the foggy dark.

The FO officer had looked them over in the glaring high-beams. “Chandrillan? Scan the traitors and find out if any of them are on the lists.” 

One trooper stepped forward with a hand unit.

Before they could use it the pilot called out,“Any minute now would be fine, lady!”

Blaster shot from somewhere up and to their left took out one drone, then the other as it turned. The ramp was plunged into darkness. Clarissa dove for the ground. Someone… _the pilot?_..dragged her behind one of the containers.

The troopers could see perfectly well in the dark and started returning fire. Blaster-shots hit all around her ringing like deafening bells as they struck the empty shielded canisters. Something large and white fell near her leg.

A stormtrooper.

Clarissa crawled forward, shoved the body over and found the rifle underneath.

Lights went on again…this time the low landing lights of the shuttle.

Reflexively Clarissa raised the gun. The young gas miner was standing in front of her, a stormtrooper helmet on her head and a Blastech in hand.

“Stay calm Senator,” the woman said, pulling off the helmet. “The situation is secure.”

Another woman appeared behind the marksman they had called Lilith. It was Susan Dorala, dressed in coveralls and also carrying a trooper rifle.

“Clarissa,” she cried, “Oh Force, Clarissa you’re alive.It’s really you.”

She threw aside the gun and embraced her old friend.

_Two of us. There are two of us._

The Troopers and the FO officer were dead in the ramp as was one of the hired guns. The other two were gone.

The pilot stepped out out of the belly of the shuttle with N’girra, both of them now armed.

“LQ2, I presume?” the green-skinned man asked.

“More or less,” Lilith answered. “You need to get out of here, the local help may dive under a rock or they may not. Get the Senators to someplace safe..two someplace safes.”

“You’re with the Resistance…with Leia?” Clarissa asked the girl, “She’s alive?”

“I haven’t seen her but we’ve had contact. She’s alive,” the woman said. Her local accent was gone….Clarissa couldn’t quite place it now.

“The Fleet? How many are left?”

The woman shouldered the rifle and looked up at her very directly.

“The Fleet is gone. As of now…today… Resistance has fewer than one hundred confirmed survivors and a handful of stolen ships. Do you know what Firestorm is?”

“I do,” N’girra said.

“Then explain it to the Senators. That’s where we are now. Plans for a Haven scenario are underway. Go and leave the rescues to those slightly more expendable. Senator Kre’fey is alive and secure but injured. As of now you three are the Republic. Get your spooky little boat out of here, Jacen. I’ll be in touch.”

“What about you?”

She smiled very prettily.

“I have my own ride.”

 

“Well,” the pilot told them later as he docked the shuttle back inside his own ship, a light freighter tricked out with a ratio of jammers to engines that fairly screamed “smuggler.”“That was exciting. I suspect very few people get to meet LQ2 in person”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_00:05, 00:04, 00:03, 00:02, 00:01_

 

 

The room dimmed and opened up.

 

Clarissa still stood beside Rala but they did not stand alone now.Senator Colan was there. Susan Darala was beside her and Seth Timon, the Corellian Senator- elect. He had been listed among the dead.

_Five…there are five of us._

 

Two different groups of Mon Calamari were visible. All of them uniformed in flight suits.

 

[Mon Cala Resistance Fleet/Cmdr. Stol Mekkan/ REMEMBRANCE]

_Ships. They have ships. However small we have a Fleet again._

 

[Mon Cala Resistance Fleet/Cmdr. Gea Holst/Integrity Outpost]

Each of them wore the red Starbird of the Republic pinned above the blue wave-insignia of the Mon Cala Defense Forces. 

_Each pin also held a narrow ribbon of ink-dark blue. Mon Cala’s color of mourning._

_Admiral Ackbar was not here._

 

[Resistance Command]

Directly across was a woman she recognized from the Resistance meeting on the Raddus. One of Leia’s aides, Larma D’Acy stood at center and half dozen other officers were beside her. Some of them looked very young.

 _Was that Nein Nunb?_ _He was reported to be oneof the…if not the most decorated pilots in the history of the ARR._

_She remembered him folding x-wings from scraps of the paper program and throwing them at the children’s table during a dinner._

“Lilith Dano” stood to the left.

 

[Intelligence/Surveillance Command Team/Lighthouse Station]

Her eye was caught by four humans who stood to her right. Three men and a woman, shoulder to shoulder, watchful like falcons. One of the men was young and the others middle-aged. She thought for a moment it was the young man who looked familiar but then realized it was the others she knew. Grandmother had watched that little holo so many times.

_Who were these people?_

 

[Cloud Riders/Aerie II]

There was a group of humanoids in what might have been high-altitude gear or ritual masks.

[Abenedo Resistance/Laurean Cell]

A group of Abenedo accompanied by an elderly Bothan.

[Abhean Resistance]

An Ithorian amongst a group of Naast and humans.

[Roche III Resistance Hive]

A Verpine in female colors….high ranking from her markings with three smaller drones

 

_A dozen others, human mostly but she thought she saw a Wookie….not Mikka…and a tall long-long-haired quadruped that she couldn’t identify…lingered at the edges, undesignated._

_No doubt many more listened but remained unseen._

_Please, We are taking a terrible chance here. Let the security on this be as armored as it seems._

 

D’Acy spoke, “Comrades, allies, friends. We stand together in a Galaxy under attack….”

 _Beside her she sensed Rala’s tension._ _Their physical vantage differed so much but Clarissa recognized her grandmother in the old Bothan’s skill. She swept the room with her eyes, marking each person in it without seeming to move or cease attention to those who spoke._

_Where was Leia..?_

When the young man stood forward Clarissa recognized him from the news vids of several years back. Flight Commander Poe Dameron a decorated ANR vet, one of the earliest and highest profile defections to Leia's Resistance. Dozens had followed him.

_As soon as he spoke she knew._

“We are more than a Resistance now, we are the new Alliance,” _He paused only slightly and did not lower his eyes. He had a good speaking voice. Clear._

“Leia Organa passed from us some weeks ago.”

 

Merise began to weep quietly.

_No. Not here Merise. Not now. They are watching us. We are all that remains of the Republic._

She heard someone speak, not realizing at first that it was herself, “The time for sorrow comes when the fight is done.”

_One of Grandmother’s maxims but she’d always attributed it to Leia._

_Both their fights were done now._

_Clarissa had only one question and it mattered only to her._

 

D’Acy nodded. “Lighthouse has eyes on the Enemy and will report first.”

 

The woman spoke.

_It was so strange to see a person she had watched laughing as she cut her lover’s hair, older now, talking about Command structure and managing communications._

A masked Cloud-rider asked about LQ2 and Clarissa expected “Lilith” to speak but instead one of the men from Lighthouse answered…he was older now too but he had a much better haircut….

“Lighthouse can supply Core Command and individual cell leaders with information and analysis on First Order activities as we find it. LQ2’s mission is to liaison communication between cells and teams and while they may initiate missions when necessary their main role is to find out what you need on the ground, assess capabilities and provide mission support.”

_The woman's eyes were fixed on Command but mostly on the young woman, LQ2. Clarissa wondered if anyone else saw the resemblance? Maybe it was only because she had seen the little holo._

_The children of heroes….Ackbar had said._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later they lay awake in the cabin of the cruiser. 

Rala on the bed and Clarissa, too tall for the cot on an arrangement of sofa cushions. Spurning a sedative thestubborn old lady only agreed to lie down on the excuse that her back hurt.

 

“You knew her well…Leia.”

_As if anyone living knew her well._

“No. She and my grandmother were very close once. I know there were fallings-out over the years but there was always a bond between them.”

“I have often wondered…and this was not the time or place to speak of it but why did Leia expend so much energy in these last years trying to find Skywalker…even as she built the Resistance, funded her own fact-finding and relief efforts to gathering evidence of First Order atrocities,  it was said that she began to spend influence and sent countless missions to look for him.”

“Said by…?”

“My dear. I am an old iconoclast and the power of the Masters of Spynet was broken almost thirty years ago but I am still a Bothan. We know things.”

“Surely that is no surprise….he is…was her brother.”

“Yes, yes, of course but why did she wait so long? It came all in sequence, some fifteen years ago did it not? The revelation of her parentage and it’s concealment…her loss of the Chairmanship in the ensuing scandal? Then the horrible death of her son, the disappearance of her brother and parting from her mate.”

_It had been rumored for years that General Solo had left his wife after the death of their son only to fall back into drink and petty thievery on the Outer Rim. Out of…Depression? Anger? A sense of betrayal? Had even he not known her secret? Some of the rumors were quite ugly._

_Yet within weeks of the attack there were whispers on loading bays and in dockside bars telling how Han Solo had returned to his Princess in her hour of need. Returned to join…even lead…the assault on the Starkiller and fallen there._

_In a Galaxy reeling and tearing itself apart there was a hunger to believe that in the end that great romance had never really died._

 

“Never in all those years did I hear her speak of the restoration of the Jedi, to the contrary. She was always reverent but she was clearly a Populist in her heart and even twenty years ago most of her speeches stressed always not looking to some myth of the past, of expecting heroes with light sabers to sweep in and save us. She who had lost so much. Do you think she became more religious after her son died?”

 

 

The new “Supreme Leader” the First Order spoke of was not some  shadowy alien of immense power and all-seeing wisdom like the last one…. N’girra monitored the Remnant feeds nauseating and blood-chilling as they were.

_"As vital as knowing the story your friends tell and is knowing the stories your enemies tell,” Grandmother used to say, although they had persuaded her against having it carved over the doorway of the Media Center._

“It could be an actor,” N’girra had suggested over a poor dinner of ration packs and watered beer after the Council. “If they did not have a suitable replacement after a coup or an assassination some cabal might have manufactured one.”

“Possibly but this “Ren” showed up in accounts all the way back to Leia’s Grace Report. I think they will startplaying up the “second generation” aspect…even more than we will,” Rala ventured. “This Hux mentioned in the reports may actually be the son of Brendal Hux, but there is no sign of the old monster himself, or any of the old Imperials for that matter except as the honored dead. They will need to hold and expand Remnant support if this “Lighthouse” assesses accurately. I would not be surprised if some glowing Imperial backstory is not invented for him soon if it has not been already.”

Many people outside the Remnant were still convinced that Snoke had never been real. There were no first-hand reports of anyone ever seeing him, not even clearly staged ones. But the new “Supreme Leader” Kylo Ren was human. He walked cloaked and often masked after the fashion of the arch-dragon of legend, Palpatine’s pet deamon Darth Vader, but people had seen him …not many but some. Survivors of attacks, arms dealers, the occasional mercenary. There was a certain constancy to the reports. He was tall, long-legged, abrupt, possibly dark-haired and reportedly flew his own flight command…..as Vader had. He also carried a light saber and performed his own executions… as Vader had.

_Eventually N’girra dozed off on the tiny sofa, exhaustedand the old lioness went to sleep. She had feared for her in these last weeks. She had become so frail._

_Do you think you might be projecting, Clarissa?_

_But Rala Kre’fey had information now and that was like a blood transfusion for Bothans._

 

Clarissa Rayma lay awake and stared at the low ceiling.

Those clear eyed Lighthouse keepers surely knew, and if they knew Command knew. How many other people knew?

 

There would be a “break-out session” with Command tomorrow from a different location. No doubt this would be discussed then and decisions made about what to say and how to proceed.

“ _knowing the story your friends tell and knowing the stories your enemies tell”_

 

Leia, Leia, Leia.

 

There being time for it now, Clarissa Rayma wept.

 

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A tall awkward human boy near her own age, perhaps 13, stood alone leaning against the wall at the Opening Reception for the Library….worse than alone, he’d been standing with C3-PO…and she felt sorry for anyone who had to do that. 

“Would you like to dance with me?” she asked.

That surprised him and he suddenly looked considerably less sullen.

The droid started babbling introductions but she already knew who the boy was. She had met him once before when they were very small and everybody here knew who she was, agonizingly.

“I’m a terrible dancer,” he said cautiously. “My father is bad but I’m worse.”

_The most dashing hero of the Rebellion was a bad dancer? The one who told dirty jokes? Shit.That just seemed wrong._

“I’m an ok dancer but everyone here is either too old, too short or both. If I look like I’m giving you lessons they’ll think it’s “sweet” and leave us both alone, possibly until cake.”

“I see.”

“I’ve been to a few of these things.”

“Not as many as I have.”

_True._

“Help a fellow sufferer out then.”

“Ok,” Ben Organa Solo said, smiling a little.

 

_He wasn’t that bad really. Force knew she’d danced with worse in folk arts class. He didn’t look down at his feet and only stepped on her toes once. It was just that his arms were a little stiff._

 

Later, to avoid anyone else taking more pictures of them together… _she hated it but he winced as if someone were jabbing him with a fork, as if it physically hurt him_ …they grabbed drinks and handfuls of stuffed mushrooms from the catering droids and she showed him the service staircase to the balcony. It was an old trick of hers.

While still technically AT the reception up there you had the privilege of staring rather than being stared at for a while.

 

“Is this actual wine?” He sniffed it suspiciously.

“Of course it’s actual wine…”

_Who serves fake wine at a formal party?_

She took a sip. Elderberry Prosecco. She was allowed small ones with food and on “occasions.”

“I don’t suppose we could get a beer?”

“Oh spare me,” Clarissa rolled her eyes. “I was starting to like you but I can’t if you turn out to be one of those obnoxious diplomatic kids who makes a big show out of sneaking things like spice vapes and alcohol to spite their famous parents.”

“Vaping is disgusting and I don’t need to sneak. My father offered me beer on my thirteenth birthday.” 

“What did your mother say about that?”

He ignored her and raised his glass, “To the famous parents club.”

“My mother isn’t famous,” she said, “And my father is dead.”

 _As if he didn’t know. He didn’t say what most people said though, at least he didn’t say, “I’m sorry.”_

“Famous grandparents then.”

“Fair enough,” she conceded and lifted her fizzy lavender wine, “I’ll drink to that.”

They sipped in silence for a while, looking out across the lawns and down at the people below. A few couples and triads were still dancing on the pathways between the rose gardens but most had stopped to listen to the singers. Her grandmother loved Chandrillan opera and a composer was going to do a residency at the library.

Clarissa could see Grandmother at a table by the fountain and thought she heard her laughing.

_She looked happy and Clarissa was glad for that, the last round of treatments had worked well and she seemed nearly her old self. Things were tense in the Capitol. She and Leia had been holed up for hours yesterday. The Centrist factions were pushing to use the budget renewal for Planetary Disaster Relief to impose restrictions on worlds they considered too aligned with the Populist parties._

“My grandfather was famous,” the boy said quietly, interrupting her thoughts. He was looking out across the lights to where Chandra was rising and the stars were just coming out. “He changed the Galaxy far more than anyone understands or credits.”

“They were friends, my grandmother and Bail Organa, she talks about him all the time.”

Clarissa had seen Leia on the grounds just after she arrived walking with the archivist in charge of the little Alderaanian collection.

“No,” the boy said. “I didn’t mean him.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I finally pass away the official cause of demise will be listed at "Writing Multiple POV"


	52. The Jedi Knight and the Ghost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Portia meets Rey.  
> A little of Portia with everybody: Kayly, Poe, BB8 and Rey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As Poe says it's like an uncomfortable job interview. Portia's issues with the Jedi on display 
> 
>  
> 
> 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100000 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100000 01101111 01101100 01100100 00100000 01110011 01101001 01110011 01110100 01100101 01110010 = hello hello old sister

 

 

 

“How are we going to work this business with Rey, Portia? The meeting is supposed to start in 03:00.”

“Do you trust her?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Damn it Portia. You want the number one reason? Because I have no choice. She’s on Command Council….maybe with an asterisk of some sort…but she’s Resistance. We’re fighting on the same side.”

_That is your father’s sort of answer Kaylyra. What would your mother say?_

“I mean do you trust her otherwise….if the situation were different would you have confidence in her as an ally?”

“For fuckssake, I just met the girl.”

_The question stopped her though. Kayly adjusted her breathing and blood pressure. Thinking._

“Yes. I do.”

“Why? And don’t say because Poe Dameron does.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Poe trusts her for a number of reasons. Some derive from shared personal connections…”

“Because she was there with Leia at the end you mean? Or because his Heart Companion Finn thinks she’s the West wind walking? Those are good reasons.”

“Yes…and others to do with the fact that he was raised to believe in the the Jedi’s definition of their “Force” in religious terms and thus to revere or at least respect those trained to utilize certain types of modifications toward what appear to be unselfish ends.”

“Like saving his life and those of the rest of the survivors of Crait?”

“Yes.”

“And killing Supreme Lizard Snoke?”

“Do we actually know she did that? I have heard variable accounts”

 

“Good people trust her, Portia.”

_Come now. You were an excellent student of history Kaylyra._

“Many good people also trusted the Jedi.”

 

“Damn it Portia. Data, experience and the faith of those I have trust in is all I have to go on here. That and my gut.”

_Ah. Now we get to Jyn’s part of your inheritance._

“I repeat, Portia, how do you want to work this? Command plan is for her to not be introduced directly at the first Council and to stay vague if any questions are asked about her. Nobody wants to open that can of bees. One lightly trained apprentice doesn’t exactly rate announcing the glorious return of the Jedi Order anyway….”

 _Good. The longest we can securely hold the full bundled transmission in real-time will be 03:15:36.1.perhaps 00:03:02longer if activity in the “Akkadese Maelstrom” remains at low levels and nothing else interferes._ _Odds are the agenda will be full and it will be all that most of them can do to review procedures, plan follow-up contacts and process the news of Leia Organa’s death._

“…but today, tomorrow or the next day she’s probably going to need to be on the “friends” list or things get complicated. At the very least I need to know if I can use the mod around her. She’s one of only three pilots cleared on the Millennium Falcon….and you know how you secretly love our infamous broken bad-ass little ship…..”

“Don’t joke about the poor thing. That navigational computer’s backstory is positively heartbreaking.”

“Portia….”

“I need to talk to Rey alone.”

“What do you mean..?”

“Not on the mod. Through intermediate channels. I’ll text her through one of your wretched little data pads. It’s better than nothing….slightly.”

“Ok. I’ll set it up. We can…”

“No Kayly. Please do not take offense, child. I’d like you to be elsewhere.”

“What? Why not? Are you…do you not trust me?” 

 _Poor Kayly. Now you sound like the little girl who struggled so with theoretical physics until you tied it to practicalities of engineering._

“I trust you more than you will likely ever know dear but as you told our friend Commander Dameron the matters that interest me will not be of importance to you, also this girl is very young. She may be more likely to answer my particular concerns freely if you, an authority figure, are not present.”

 

Kayly laughed.

“Portia, I love you and please don’t take this the wrong way but I am not the one who’s going to intimidate anybody. You scare the hell out of people sometimes.”

_What?_

“That’s ridiculous. Why would anyone be afraid of a simple navigational system?”

“Strange as it seems Auntie, they sometimes are.”

_She hadn’t considered that._

“Perhaps…”

“Perhaps what?”

“Perhaps a trusted and neutral intermediary would make her feel more confident….say the small mechanical that you call BB-8?”

 

Kayly walked back up the ramp part way and shouted into the shuttle cockpit.

“Dameron! Get down here!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kayly passed him the mod after explaining her proposal.

 

“Portia!” he said. “What the fuck?”

_Why was everyone shouting?_

“Clarify the question Poe. Your hearing is excellent by the way.”

“Why do you want to get BB-8 involved in this?”

“Kayly is concerned that your friend may feel uncomfortable, so I have proposed him as a chaperone as he is very is fond of Rey. Is that her full name by the way?”

“As far as I know…and how do you know he’s fond of her?”

_Heavens. Does anyone know anything about this girl? What kind of army are you running here. Cassian would be appalled._

“He has mentioned it several times in passing.”

 _He really had. He was very social._ _It probably arose from an impulse common to many of the so-called “astromechs” especially those who had not been damaged or made anxious and compulsive by repeated memory wipes and other abuse. They sought to be helpful. It was their framework of purpose and when allowed to interact and adapt freely in conditions of positive reinforcement some of them made great strides._

 

Little BB-8 had, in fact, done something recently that was positively heartwarming. It sought her out purposefully. Highly attuned to Poe’s actions and welfare it had no doubt noticed his use of the mod during Kayly’s interview with Finn. Combining this observation with data taken in during the rescue from Roche the infant rolled very near to the Commander and began to beep quietly.

*01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100000 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100000 01101111 01101100 01100100 00100000 01110011 01101001 01110011 01110100 01100101 01110010*

“Shhhh…” Poe said, “Buddy, you can talk to her later. I’m listening here.”

This exchange was quite remarkable not only for what it indicated about the little one’s capacities but about Poe Dameron’s as well.

 

 

 

 

 

_______________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

“What happens when you wear that thing…?”

Rey asked him tapping her ear.

“She sends signal directly to your auditory nerve,” Poe explained, “it’s not unlike a neural comm, but nobody gets anything pierced and it pops right on and off. I know it seems weird but Rook and Andor use it a lot and Leia did as well. That doesn’t matter though because right now she’s dead set against you ever using it. We just need to find out if anyone else can use it around you.”

Rey frowned.

“What does she sound like?”

Poe shrugged….there was something in the question that made him uncomfortable, she could tell…. “I’m told it varies. Different people hear different people. Your brain assigns the signal a voice.”

“Who did Leia hear?”

He shook his head. “I wasn’t there. Connix says she looked shaken but never said who it was.”

_Oh hell._

“Who do you hear?”

 _It was, she realized as soon as it was out of her mouth, the wrong question._ “I’m sorry…you don’t have to…”

It’s ok,” he said quietly, “I hear my mother.”

 _I don’t want to use it._ Rey thought. _I never want to use it._

_BB-8 piped in._

*old sister is polite and kind but very big/complex she is far away and tells how to find things but cannot find what she is looking for but sees far away between things she is herself and nobody else and a building…*

“He tries,” Poe said patting the little droid’s head assembly, “but I still just don’t get it. Sorry pal.”

*Poe is a good pilot*

“Thanks buddy. Don’t worry Rey. With fighting your way out of a burning Star Destroyer being ten this will barely be a four.”

 

 

 

 

Kayly Andor was up on the newly-built Flight Deck with Rose setting up the transmit pads for the big meeting. She gave her a thumbs up as they passed. 

 

_“It may feel a little like a debrief and a lot like a job interview,” Poe told her with a wink as he walked her her down “and she may come off as a hardass, but she’s actually a pussycat….a sort of semi-omniscient, weird AI pussycat who asks intensely off-putting questions.”_

 

Was this what job interviews felt like? She’d never had one….except for Luke making her stand in the rain, hike for miles and slamming doors in her face.

_In the end she’d gotten the job though, so there was that._

They had cleared out a big container pod and rigged it to the the main cabin as a sort of data room and lounge. There was still a cot in the corner and a handful of cloaked data pads sitting on the metal table. 

 

Rey sat in one of the cheap stackable chairs and BB-8 rolled up next to her.

Somebody had left a still-hot cup of tea on the table next to the larger data pad.

_Two sweeteners…it had to be Finn._

He’d written, “BEST JEDI EVER” on the side of the cup with wax-chalk. She smiled.

 

“So,” she said to the droid, “are we set up here? Do I just start talking?”

*old sister says you look nervous*

“What did you tell her?”

*that you are good*

 

She took a breath and sat down at the terminal.

The text lit above the pad.

 

[Is it acceptable for me to call you Rey?]

“Yes.”

 

[Hello Rey. My name is Portia.]

“Hello, Portia.”

_Oh this wasn’t weird AT ALL._

[I regret any unintended offense and apologize for the inconvenience but as I explained to Leia Organa I will not allow my work with your Alliance to put my friends and neighbors at risk.]

 

BB-8 rolled his head assembly around to look at her.

[I have asked BB-8 if he would share his visuals since he has better sight than this poor contraption’s woeful camera. He has agreed. Will such an arrangement be acceptable to you?]

 

“Why do you want to see me?”

[Humans communicate a great deal nonverbally and I want to be able to understand as well as possible.]

 

“It hardly seems fair that you can see me and I can’t see you.”

[You indicated to Kayly that you could see me.]

 

Rey thought back to the scrambled visions of blue outlines and buildings and forms.

 

“I don’t know what I saw. What are you?”

[A navigational station.]

 

_Poe had warned her of this._

_“Because that’s what she believes she is?” Finn asked._

_“No,” Kaylyra Andor said, “Because that’s what she is.”_

 

There was a pause.

[We should not waste time with nonsense. Your friends and allies are attempting to set up a conference and the Enemy is on the move Kayly has a number of missions ongoining. You and I need to set parameters for cooperation.]

“I’m sorry I saw you….if that is what started this….I couldn’t help it.”

 

[ I accept your apology, and do not mean to imply that you yourself have done anything wrong. My concern is whether the modifications which enable you to scan Kayly at a level sufficient to track my conversations with her poses an unacceptable security risk.]

 

“I’m not a security risk. I am part of the Resistance. The First Order is my enemy too….you must believe me.”

[I do or we would not be communicating now.]

_Wait._

“What do you mean by “modifications?”

[Any of a wide range of neural capability enhancements. I have heard you described as Skywalker’s apprentice. Are you one of the Knights?]

 

_Nobody ever asked her to “describe” her situation, to lay it out in words. Not since Luke had anyway._

 

_She had tried to talk to Leia but the General would only say that they would find a way. Finally she had only taken the pieces of the broken lightsaber out of her hands and laid them on the counter. “Luke’s path was never my path. Maybe things would have been different if it could have been but it wasn’t.” She wore her sadness then with same the ease she’d worn her cloak, as if it kept her warm. Rey hadn’t been able to bear to ask more._

 

“When you say “modifications” do you mean the Force?….I think I’m what’s described as an adept. The answer is no…I…I don’t think that’s possible to be a Jedi Knight anymore, at least not in the way it once was, but Luke tried to teach me. I want to find the Jedi path.”

 

[Poe and Leia Organa both confirmed that Luke Skywalker had died. I see that you were very close to him. Please accept my sympathies Rey.]

_So that was the story the galaxy knew. It all depended a great deal on your definition of “died.”_

_What would she find if she went back to the island? Not a body she was sure._

“Luke…has joined the Force.”

  

[………………………………I’m familiar with that metaphor. It is a great loss. Bodhi liked him very much and though I always believed him misguided in his attempts to revive the Knights as an organizational construct I confess that I liked him as well. He had great courage.]

 _Was that a pause for effect?_ “How did you know Luke?”

[I was at what they call the Battle of Endor. Three years ago I gave Leia Organa my word to help her look for him. I’m glad the map at least proved helpful. Poe has been either confused or purposefully vague on the subject, How was Skywalker able communicate with her via neural messaging? Was it pre-or post-mortem?]

 

_“He was THERE,” Finn insisted, always where Leia could not hear. “I saw him. He and Ren were slugging it out!” He looked to Poe for confirmation, “You saw him man. You were looking for the door he came in through. He walked straight to her and put something in her hands…talked to her…what did he say?”_

_But Poe, sitting with them on the floor, huddled in the dim light of the Falcon’s alcove bays only shook his head._

_Poe’s smile, the way he moved through the crowded ship as if he were checking on everybody, his jokes… his terrible weird jokes…kept them all going in those days but sometimes when it was just her and Finn and Rose he would get quiet, curl his fingers into a fist and slowly stretch them back out._

_“He said he was sorry.”_

 

“If it’s a proprietary secret or something I will understand…”

“What? No it’s not like that it's just that…I don’t know how…”

_Had she done it? She could remember the room on the island and the agony-wracked young man she talked to and the faint pressure of fingers touching her own but there was nothing inside her memory of how any of it had come to be._

“Their bond was very profound and he had clearly developed some very advanced self-modifications. The Jedi always boasted about such things.…to be fair they boasted about a lot of things… but I have always been curious as to how that particular one would manifest.]

“I …I wasn’t there. I’m told he appeared very clearly and spoke to her though. Most of the people who saw him believed he was physically present but….he wasn’t.”

[Very impressive. He must have had tremendous resources. I will always regret never communicating with him directly.]

_It killed him Portia. He knew when he did it that it would. Must have known what from the moment I stepped back aboard the Falcon without him. Maybe he knew from the minute I showed up with that light saber._

[ Are you capable of such image projection?]

 

_Rey closed her eyes at the memory of being two places at once, of Snoke. The throne room._

_She wanted to turn and scream to him but hadn’t.“Ben there’s no one there!”_

_A shape was speaking in front of her, gesticulating but nothing was there except Cruelty stuffed like straw into a cracked and peeling skin._

_He said that neither of them had that much power. That it had all been bait. A trick._

_All Rey knew was that she didn’t have that power now._

_She knew he didn’t either._

_Snoke had done it._

_The last cruelty. Not to her, she was nothing. He was going to torture and kill her but she was nothing but a tool._

_Ben was the target. Ben was always the target_

_That was the last weapon he saved to break you with. Worse than killing the father who loved you, tormenting he mother who still believed you could be saved. Harder than standing by as countless people cried out in fear and vanished. The worst torture for you was the one saved for last._

_Telling you "You aren’t strong enough."_

 

“No. I just figured out the rocks six months ago.”

[Oh yes. Object displacement. Yaddle used to do that.]

_Why did she feel like she should be taking notes?_

[Very well. I hope you can forgive me Rey but I must ask you unpleasant and possibly traumatic questions and I require you to answer as honestly and directly as possible.]

 

_Yes thanks. It’s been a picnic so far._

BB-8 rolled up to bump her knee and made the low chipping noise he made when he was sorry, or trying to comfort Poe.

He also tipped his head to open his ocular wide.

_So she can see what I look like._

 

“Go ahead.”

[Were you successful in concealing information from the Enemy?]

 

 _When Ren tried to see there had been a wall and once she knew where to push back it had held strong._

_Maybe I was a Junker.In the right spot with the right leverage you can poke through a durasteel skeleton with a pocket knife but without it you can blast all day with a laser torch and never make a scratch._ _But Snoke had torn into her head like dry paper._

 

BB-8 made a descending whistle and she laid her hand on casing.

She swallowed.

“No. From Kylo Ren, yes but not from Snoke.”

[The one that is dead now. Did you kill it?]

 

“What?..you mean did I kill Snoke?”

[That’s what the older one called itself, yes.]

“No. I couldn't. He…Kylo Ren did.”

 

[Again? It really does seem to be an essential part of the process. Just to be clear, by “Ren” you mean the one that used to be Leia Organa’s genetic child?]

“How long have you known that?”

[I knew the first time I got a clear look at it several years ago. The medical and cleaning equipment that they use on those hideous ships has high level bio-reads and I knew Leia Organa.]

_You can’t hurt her anymore Ben._

_They are all beyond you now and so am I._

“Can you see him now?”

[04:10:28 he was on a destroyer….one of the really awful ones…in the Courescant System. I have to be very careful, as you no doubt understand now. I will not risk it seeing me. At least it’s noisy there. My visuals come in blinks of course but the great downside of this improved hearing is having to listen to the wretched creature snarling in the dark. It was worse when there were two of them but it’s still painful. ]

 

“You called him a beast, Portia. He is a human.”

[My dear Jula named it the Fury, but that is a story that would have no meaning for you. Try to understand that our experiences differ Rey. I never met the human named Ben Solo and now I never will. Leia Organa’s grief must have been profound but her light is out and my duty is to help save those I can.]

 

“Portia I promise I’m only going to watch this meeting not participate. Right now I’m just a soldier and a pilot. Maybe that’s all I can be until the First Order is driven back into whatever hole they crawled out from. Do I need to avoid Kayly Andor? Does she have to avoid me? Will you refuse to help the Resistance if I’m around?”

[ I gave my word to Leia Organa, and before her to Cassian and Jyn, that I would help. My intention is to find the safest  way. For the next few hours neither Kayly nor Poe will need the mod. That should be sufficient until we can conduct some tests. There is one other question I must ask you. Think carefully before you answer. Have you ever used any of your modifications to co-opt the action, autonomy or independent mental processes of another sentient being?]

“I….”

_The stormtrooper. The one who had undone her restraints._

_…. aggressive. hostile to deviation because deviation was threat. a man in his thirties. reprogrammed once. blank spaces. older than the rest of the D. kept strong by something. small pins that he stuck in his arm. when they stopped working he would find another way……_

“…once. I made a man untie me so I could escape…I didn’t hurt him.”

 

[I see. Don’t ever do that again or, to use one of Jyn’s phrases “all bets are off.]

 

 

_What?_

“With all due respect ma’am…they would have killed me.

 

[I understand that]

 

_Oh fuck this._

 

“Ma’am am I being judged? By text on a data pad?

[I am not accusing you of anything but I would ask you to consider that modification very carefully. How did you come by it? Was it Skywalker who taught you?]

 

_No._

_It was before she found Luke. Ren had shown her how….though he hadn’t meant to._

_With some leverage more than sound …Had there even been sound? And she had fallen limp._

_Then on the Starkiller…trapped. The memory came back to her of what he had done, how it had felt and she copied him._

_It was the only weapon she had._

 

“If I could have gotten to a blaster I would have fought my way out but I couldn’t.….”

[I know. I understand the drive to use whatever weapons one has to preserve oneself but that is the burden you will have to accept now.]

 

“I don't understand.”

 

[………………………………..I am very likely the last of my kind. It was a different age and we travelled the stars and what sustained us were the close bonds between us all, organic and inorganic together. One day a snarling darkness came. It leaked across the Galaxy spreading death and fear and it devoured all of us. All but me, the youngest sister. Like Leia Organa my brother’s last sacrifice saved me. So I will tell you what I tried to tell the Jedi many years ago, to my people the greatest crime possible was to override the systems of others without their willing and informed consent. I believe that somewhere someone broke that prohibition and let the monster in. I tried to warn the Knights a very very long time ago but they would not listen. They had a some rigid incomprehensible paradigm of their own about microscopic blood markers, emotional detachment and energy fields and for all their achievements and genuine skills there do not seem to be very many of them alive any more so I ask you to consider, that I may be on to something. If we are to work together you may not do it again.]

 

_“Hubris” Luke had said. The sins of the Jedi. She had thought he meant politics or blindly serving the Emperor or the rich shiny temple on Coruscant._

_Had he meant this?_

 

_One of the books said “…you will find only one Master but many teachers. Any who possesses knowledge new to you is due the respect owed a sage…”_

“Portia. Commander Andor…Kayly…says you knew a great deal about the Jedi. Luke tried to train me. I’ve learned a great deal but now I have to study on my own…could you help me?”

 

[……………………………………………………………………………….Oh my.  I will gladly provide you with any historical data I can for your researches but let me repeat I am a small building far away. There were other so called “Force” traditions that might still have practitioners. Or perhaps one of the other former apprentices would be willing to help you?]

 

“There are no others. The New Jedi padawans were all murdered. Leia is gone now and Luke was the last Jedi Master. I won’t….I’ve seen what the Dark Side does and I won’t go there for help.”

 

[I think you may be incorrect. The Togrutan female would be quite elderly by now but I saw her only a few years ago and there was at least one other. Let me look into it and get back to you. In the meantime you should go get prepared for the meeting. I am glad we were able to talk, Rey.]

 

*goodbye* BB-8 said.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing like a long conversation with essentially no action for the holidays.

**Author's Note:**

> wildly jumping time-lines and POV....because that appears to be my jam.


End file.
